“I told her to go back to New York. It doesn’t seem like she listened. We need to go to her family’s home. Talk to her grandmother in Bayou Geaux Down. How’s your Cajun?”
My Cajun is non-existent. As, so it seems, is my ability to act like a rational human being around Ovsanna. Well, maybe that’s to be expected. She’s not human, there’s nothing rational about that, that’s for sure. Still, she’d warned me right from the beginning that she’s not good relationship material. Not capable of feeling love like humans do. And here I am losing my shit the closer we get to each other. Not cool, not cool at all.
I tried to put it in perspective as I took the elevator downstairs and walked to my mother’s booth. The con had another three hours to go before the doors closed. I was probably going to need the truck on into the night. If things get out of hand and I’m late getting back, I’ll have Matty hold Mom’s merchandise for me and she can drive home tomorrow with SuzieQ.
Somehow, I’ve got to come to terms with this. Ovsanna’s like the scorpion in Aesop’s fable who kills the fly in spite of his promise not to— because it’s his nature. Ovsanna’s not going to kill me— at least, not if she can help it— but I can’t blame her for keeping her distance. It’s her nature.
34. MARAL
I had everything I needed for Miz Foret. Everything Miz Foret said she needed to make the potion so I could feel something again.
I just didn’t have Miz Foret.
She wasn’t in her trailer. I stood on the steps, surrounded by the abalone shells lying half buried in the ground. I’ve seen them for sale in voodoo shops in New Orleans. I wondered if they have some healing powers or if she just used them for yard decorations. I pulled the screen door open against the wind, and pounded on the door. When she didn’t answer, I tried the knob. The door was unlocked, but the trailer was empty. All the stuff she’d used to make the incense for me was still sitting on the kitchen counter.
She had to be around somewhere. Her old blue Sentra was parked on the road. Two fishing rods stuck out the back window and the wind was smashing them against the door frame. The top of one had already splintered off. It was whipping back and forth against the car, scraping the paint like someone with a grudge and a key.
There was lightning way in the distance over Atchafalaya Bay. The thunder sounded closer, almost right across the bayou. That didn’t make sense until I realized my hearing’s so much better since Ovsanna turned me. With storm clouds coming in, Miz Foret shouldn’t be too far away.
I couldn’t see much past the ferns and the trees separating her property from the sculpture garden. From where I stood, there didn’t seem to be any visitors. All I could see clearly on the other side of the fence was a white concrete statue of a nude man. It was facing me, standing on a green-tiled pedestal about four feet high. The man had his right arm sticking out and he was holding a white cement sword in his hand. A huge stone eagle perched on his forearm. His left hand held a nude woman in the air. She was bent backward at the waist. Her breasts were pointing straight up to the sky and her face and hair were hanging down facing away from me. She was painted white, too. I guess she wasn’t an angel. She didn’t have wings or anything. But her pelvis, which was staring right at me, didn’t have a vagina either, so who knows what Kenny Hill was thinking.
Who knows what he was thinking when he sculpted any of it? All those black figures writhing in pain. Bending over, praying, crying, supplicating. Were they supposed to be human? Maybe Ovsanna is right— maybe I’m only remembering the good parts about having human feelings.
“Miz Foret?” I yelled as loud as I could, but the wind blew my voice back toward the trailer. If she was in the garden with the devils and the Jesuses, she wasn’t going to hear me. I walked back to the street and entered the garden through the front gate. Then walked down the path past Gabriel and the one-armed horse back rider. I had to lean into the wind to keep from being pushed backward.
Miz Foret was standing behind the lighthouse on the bayou side of the fence. She was cast-net fishing.
She had her back to me. She’d just pulled her net in and was concentrating on getting the baitfish into a cooler. With the wind, I knew she couldn’t hear me. I shifted. Came up on her side of the fence, right behind her. Ovsanna didn’t shift very often. She said it took too much energy and she’d rather drive. Not me. I like scaring the shit out of people. It’s fun.
“Miz Foret?”
She jumped and turned to face me. “Mais, sha, you scared me! Can’t hear a thing over dat wind. It’s gonna be a bad storm, for true. Comment ca vas?”
“Me, I’m not good, Miz Foret. Those prayers you made on me didn’t make any change. And that washing didn’t help either. I’m still not feeling anything.” Well, that’s not entirely true. That orgasm was something. But that’s still not what I’m missing. That’s just a feeling like hunger or thirst. It’s not a human emotion. That’s what I’m remembering and that’s what I want to feel. “I’m still feeling like I’m dead inside. I need your help.”
“Oh, chère, I’m so sorry. Mais, it hasn’t been too long since you were here. Dose prayers maybe need to do dere work wit’ more time. Did you go home to your mamère?”
“No. No. I went to New Orleans and got what you told me. I got what you need to do the remedy.”
“What remedy? What you talkin’ about, sha?” She knocked the last fish into the cooler and began wrapping the hand line around her elbow.
“You told me there’s a remedy you can do to bring love back to me. To get my feelings back. I brought you the stuff you said you need.” I held out the vial and an envelope.
She dropped the cast-net and backed away from me. Stared at the vial, then looked at me with horror in her eyes.
“What you did, Maral? What’s dat in your hand?”
“You know what this is. This is blood from a beating heart. And these are eyelashes from dark eyes. Me, I got them, just like you said.” She’d backed almost to the water’s edge. I picked up the net and started coiling it. “Don’t look at me like that, Miz Foret. You killed them baitfish, for true. And that crab, you killed that crab twice. You burnt it to ash. There’s no difference. I needed that blood. That’s what you told me to get.”
“Oh, chère, dere’s a gris gris on you, for true. You can’t do dat. I can’t do dat. I told you. Dat’s Black Magick. I won’t do dat, sha, I won’t.”
I taught Jamie how to net fish when he was five years old. I’m fast with the net. Before she knew what I was doing, I threw it. It landed on top of her and I pulled it tight so the sinkers trapped her feet. Then I moved in and wrapped the line around her and shoved her in front of me.
“Oh yes, vielle. You will.”
35. OVSANNA
As soon as I got back to my room I called Orson.
“I reached Ernst, darling,” he said, “he had several names of our kind he thought would be good for Annie. He’ll call you as soon as he’s made arrangements with one of them. Now… Justin?”
“It wasn’t natural causes, Orson. And it’s not Annie. She may need a lawyer briefly if we don’t get this locked down before they charge her with Derek’s death, but Annie didn’t kill either one of them. I’m certain.”
“I see. And I take it you have a culprit in mind?”
“Yes. I do. Maral. It’s possible she killed both Derek and Justin.”
There was dead silence for a moment. Then Orson actually sputtered my name. “Ovsanna—”
“Look, Orson, I don’t have time to explain. Peter and I are driving to the bayou to track her down. We at least need to hear what she has to say. What I need you to do is make sure everyone involved knows we’re stopping production for the week— cast, crew, writers, p.a.’s, caterers. Don’t forget anyone. I don’t want anyone driving to the studio tomorrow morning to find himself alone in the parking lot. And would you call the festival people and make my apologies for tonight? It will be better coming from you than Monk. Monk can cancel the jet.”
<
br /> “Of course, Ovsanna. I’ll take care of the studio concerns. You take care of Maral. Although, forgive me for saying this, but I thought you’d taken care of Maral months ago.”
“I thought I had, too.” My phone buzzed. “Suffice it to say she’s no longer the Maral you knew. I have to go. Ernst is calling. Please keep this between us; I don’t need to hear from the clan right now.” I took the phone away from my ear and pressed the button for the waiting call.
“Parev, Obour,” I said. Ernst and I always start our conversations in the language of our youth, I don’t know why. It’s the way we’ve been saying hello ever since we both arrived in Los Angeles more than a century ago. He’s five hundred years older than I am, but because I was the first to “inhabit, occupy, or possess a township of greater than nine hundred and ninety-nine souls”, leadership of the clans fell to me. Every vampyre in L.A. pays me fealty, but I turn to Ernst for support when needed. Legal and otherwise.
“Eench bes ek, Chatelaine? How are you?”
“Well, I’m seriously regretting the decision I made eight months ago that led to this mess. And I’ve had to shut down production on Mid-Evil because we lost Derek. And now Justin. And with Justin dead, the box-office on Satan Gone Bad will probably go through the roof— which in no way is worth his loss. So all in all, the answer to your question ‘how am I’ is votch shad lav. Not so good. In fact, I’m pretty shitty.”
“Knerek utyun, Ovsanna, I’m sorry. What can I do to help? I have the name of a lawyer there for you to call for Annie. He’s of the Azeman clan. Theda and Charles know him. He dines with them when he’s flying over Manhattan. I can always tell from the obits in the Post if they’ve gone out together. Anyway, if anyone can get her off, he can. He was a major influence behind the scenes in the Aaron Burr acquittal. That was a century ago, of course.”
“Annie didn’t kill Derek, although she’s raged in public that she intended to. I’ll call the Azeman to have him standing by, but I don’t think she’ll need him for long. Not if Peter and I can track down the real killer.”
“And how to you intend to do that? I take it you have an idea who it is?”
“I’m afraid I do. And ultimately, I’m the one responsible. I think it’s Maral, Ernst. She came to me yesterday morning to ask for help and I sent her away. I think she tried to kill Peter for revenge and when she failed, well, I’m not sure, but it’s possible she turned to Derek and Justin as a way of making me pay.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible, Chatelaine. She’s an unbalanced woman. You knew that when you got rid of her all those months ago.”
“Well, she’s no longer an unbalanced woman, Obour, that’s just it. I didn’t simply get rid of her. You thought she left town because I fired her, but I did more than that. I came close to killing her. And then I turned her instead of letting her die.”
“You turned her? Maral is vampyre? Ahman Astvats, Ovsanna—”
“I know. It was an error in judgement. I should have learned from Valentino. Turning someone that unbalanced was a mistake I never should have repeated. I guess I knew it, because I never told any of you, save Theda and Charles. I sent her to them to learn our ways. And now it seems she’s learned some of our ways too well, and others, not at all.”
“Well, you can take care of her, I’m sure. Does Peter know what he’s getting into?”
“He does now. He’s enraged with me for not trusting him, for keeping him at bay. He thinks because I never told him, that I don’t respect him. That I don’t believe he can take care of himself. And that I don’t need him to take care of me.”
“Chatelaine… you are a 450-year-old Dakhanavar vampyre of the First Bloodline. He’s right. You don’t need him to take care of you.”
“But that’s just it, Ernst. I’m having thoughts about him— not feelings, they’re not feelings— but they’re thoughts that I don’t remember ever having before. He got angry at me and I swear for a moment I actually felt… shit, I don’t know what… remorse? Sorrow? I don’t know what to call it because I’ve never experienced it before. I never do anything that embarrasses me. I wouldn’t know how to be embarrassed. I certainly never feel guilt. And I rarely feel regret. But something’s going on. Something I don’t recognize. And I don’t like it. If this is anything like what humans feel, I don’t want any part of it.”
There was a knock at the door. Peter. I could smell him. And suddenly, I wanted him. Not for feeding. For connecting. I wanted him on top of me. Inside me. I wanted to be looking up at him when he entered me so what I felt when I tightened around him was reflected by the passions I saw in his eyes. Well… lust I can deal with. It’s all these other emotions I want put paid to.
“I’m sorry, Ernst. Peter is here. I have to go. Can you text me the lawyer’s information? I’ll call him from the car. And, Ernst, please… we never had this conversation. I never said any of those things.”
“Yes haskanum, Ovsanna. I understand.”
I hung up and opened the door for Peter.
He’d showered and changed into black jeans and a black tee. His hair was still wet. I wanted to push his bangs off his forehead, but I didn’t want to risk touching him in case I couldn’t stop. We didn’t have time. Besides, I wasn’t all that certain how he would react if I did.
He had his leather jacket in one hand— the jacket he’d been wearing the first time he came to my beach house— and a wooden stake in the other.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“My mother had it for sale on her table. She swears it’s the actual prop they used in the 1966 version of Dracula: Prince of Darkness. The one with Christopher Lee. She sells it with a Letter of Authentification. Although who in hell authenticated it, I haven’t got a clue. I had to promise I’d pay full price if I don’t get it back to her. She wants $17,000.00 for it. Honest to God, she should be negotiating our free trade agreements.”
“And what do you think you’re going to do with it?”
I never should have phrased it that way. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw anger flash in his eyes.
“Gee, I don’t know, Ovsanna. Maral’s a vampyre, isn’t she? Thanks to you. I guess I thought a stake might come in handy if I want to arrest her. Of course, I’ve got my gun, but you don’t seem to have much faith in my ability to use it. In spite of the fact I’ve come to your rescue with it more than once since we met.”
“You’re right, Peter. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply… anything. Look, can we just get on the road? We don’t even know where she is, and the skies look like all hell’s going to break loose soon. Let’s find Maral first; then we can fight over who gets to use what to do what to her.”
36. MARAL
I pushed the old lady toward the trailer. The sky was black with storm clouds, the wind so strong it pushed the rain toward us almost sideways. I scanned the sculpture garden through the darkness. There was no one around. No one to see us; no one to hear us.
When she tried to resist, I dragged her. “You’re gonna make that potion, Miz Foret. I’m gonna make you make it.”
The wind drove the cast-net into her face so deep that it cut the skin on her cheek. I could smell the droplets of blood. They were washing away fast in the rain, but I could smell them, for true. My fangs teased at my gums.
I didn’t want to turn. I fought it. Concentrated on getting Miz Foret to shuffle faster. If I turned before she did her magic, I’d never feel anything again. And neither would she. We got to the steps and I pushed her around to face me.
“I’m taking this net off you, Miz Foret, but you gotta help me or I don’t know what I might do. I don’t want to hurt you, but you can see I’m past the point of caring about anyone or anything. I barely care about myself, and if I could die, I would. If I’m gonna keep living, then I got to have some feelings back. You gotta do that spell.”
She stared at me. She wasn’t scared, I could see that. I wondered if she could see inside me— see what Ovsanna turned m
e into. I know I don’t look any different, but she’s a healer, maybe she can sense when’s something’s not natural. Then her eyes teared up and I saw compassion in them. That’s another feeling I barely remember. How long before I don’t even recognize it? She gave a slight nod. I reached down and pulled the net off her. Threw it in the mud and followed her into the trailer.
“I’ll do what you’re axin’, Maral, de best I can. It breaks my heart dat you took some poor creature’s life to make dis spell. I don’t think God will take too kindly to dat, and for true, I don’t know if it will do anythin’ for you. Dis ain’t de way for healin’.”
“You said you know things to help bring love into a heart. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Just do that, please.”
“Mais, still I’m thinkin’ dere’s a cunja cast on you, so first, sit down over dere and let me do somethin’ else.”
I sat in the burgundy chair under the two pictures of Christ. Miz Foret went into the kitchen area and I watched while she opened cupboard doors, searching for something. From a cabinet under the sink, she removed a round metal tin filled with white wax flakes. She tapped the flakes into a pot and set it on the stove over a low flame.
There was a second shelf that hung below the shelf with all her brown bottles of herbs and dried flowers. The lower one was covered with candles. She had every color and lots of shapes. There were candles shaped like crosses and hearts and goats and cats and people. Lovers embracing. There was a pink candle I thought was a half blossomed tulip… until I saw the blue wax penis sitting next to it.
Miz Foret took a thick black candle off the shelf and brought it to me. “Light dis, sha, and den say: ‘easily lit, you burn as I allow, but I have de power to disavow’. Den blow de candle out.”
I lit the candle and said the words, then blew it out. The flame was weird; it burned way high above the wick, almost as though it wasn’t part of it. When I blew it out, the wick kept on pulsing red. The traiteur took the candle back to the pot on the stove. She dipped it into the melted white wax. She didn’t dip it all the way, there was a little black still showing near the wick, but when she’d dipped it three times, the candle was almost all white. The wick stopped pulsing.
Make Me Dead: A Vampyres of Hollywood Mystery Page 15