The Malveaux Curse Mysteries Boxset 2

by G A Chase

  Myles walked down Frenchmen Street, rejecting option after option. In front of the club, Charlie was busy unloading his truck filled with cases of alcohol. At least the business was in good hands, even if the cane wasn’t. Myles stood still, considering the opportunity in front of him.

  “You going to help me unload these boxes, or just stand there like a statue?” Charlie yelled from inside the back of his truck.

  “Just let me stash this stick in the cab. Don’t want anyone walking off with it.”

  Charlie stood upright with a case of Jameson’s in his hands. “I don’t usually see you carrying that thing around unless there’s a problem. Should I be expecting another wild night? Because if so, I’m stashing one of these crates in the back for employee use.”

  Myles grabbed the nearest crate of Jack Daniels “Actually, I need a favor. Think you can hide that stupid stick somewhere no one would find it?”

  “Including you? If you’re on the voodoo wagon, I’ll be your twelve-step sponsor. Or is it seven steps?”

  “I wish.” The manual labor of carrying boxes felt good. It reminded Myles of their bartending days in the Quarter when his chief job had been doing whatever Charlie instructed. “We’re running a game of deception, and we need to convince the devil to come play. You’ll have to hide the cane someplace close. When I do need it, I’ll be in a hurry.”

  Charlie gave him the usual scowl of disapproval. “I’m certain I don’t want to know the details. How long of a head start does this fox have before you release the hound?”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near that thing when Colin comes hunting for it. Kendell’s talking to Delphine before heading to the club. Once she has the trap baited, it’s anyone’s guess on how long it will take Colin to notice, but he’s never been one to let an opportunity sit idle for long.”

  Charlie put the last case on the bar. “Then I guess it’ll be up to you to set up for tonight. That’ll give me three hours to find a haystack to hide your needle in before opening the club.”

  Myles watched Charlie drive off, hoping he hadn’t just put his friend in mortal danger.

  * * *

  Kendell struggled with how much to confide in Delphine. Myles’s suspicions about the voodoo practitioner had proven right far more often than not. The one thing they both could agree on, however, was Delphine’s dedication to the reputation of Marie Laveau.

  She pushed open the door to the shop with a feeling of dread. Why couldn’t this have been the building that needed to be burned down?

  “Are you here to see me, or just passing through again?” Delphine didn’t stop organizing her fragrances.

  Kendell pulled the silver skull from her bag. “I need to get this headpiece out of the apartment. Having it so close to the cane is raising enough paranormal energy to give me a headache. I was hoping you could hang onto it for me.”

  Delphine stopped playing with her dark-brown jars. “What mischief has the devil been up to this time?”

  Of course you’d see through me. “For a change, we thought it might be fun to lead him on for a while.”

  The voodoo expert took the silver skull and turned it in the light. It seemed to glow in the woman’s brown fingers. “And what do you want me to do with it?”

  “Stick it in your cabinet with the other totems. It is an artifact from Marie Laveau after all. It belongs in your collection.”

  Delphine squeezed it in her hand as if trying to crush it. “Don’t bullshit me. What do you expect to happen?”

  No use in lying. Either you’re with us, or you’re not. “Colin won’t come through the seventh gate the way we’d like, so we thought we’d provide a little incentive.”

  Delphine stopped playing with the trinket. “This is Myles’s idea, isn’t it? Sounds like the kind of foolhardy ploy he’d come up with. I assume Colin has already worked through all of the other gates?”

  “He’s presented his case to each guardian, including me.”

  The woman sat in the chair behind her worktable. “I won’t ask if you’ve all accepted his pleas, just as I don’t want to know your scheme for him once he shows up. I’ll take the trinket, but leave me out of whatever you’ve got planned.”

  Like you’re some innocent bystander? But Kendell knew Delphine’s ignorance was in everyone’s best interest. “Just stash it as a favor to me. And if Colin should happen by, I wouldn’t mind a heads-up.”

  “I’m only doing this because Marie put a spell on this headpiece.”

  62

  Each day for Colin was worse than the last. Hives covered every exposed area of skin. The itching was intolerable. Being in the vault helped only slightly, but hiding never won a war. In an act of supreme self-will, he abandoned the comfort of the iron walls and returned to his condo. He still needed to go back on the offensive. His mind, however, was as consumed with the scratching as his fingers.

  He gave up on his wardrobe. The bathrobe was all he could stand next to his skin. Think, damn it. How do I get out of this mess? Pacing from one wall to the next, he’d measured out the condominium too many times to count. What had been a luxury penthouse now felt like a cage. Looking outside, however, made his skin crawl. If he was to leave the relative safety of the brick walls, he needed a specific destination and a plan.

  Each window displayed a different frustration. He didn’t need the view of the World Trade Center to know he’d never make it back into the vaults. Luther had turned the building into a fortress. With only Colin to worry about, the guardian of the paranormal had been able to custom design a security system for the only inhabitant in hell. The next wall of windows presented Colin with the bank and police station. Like either my mother or uncle would give a damn about my situation. Staring downriver toward his vault was the most depressing of directions. Now that the curse had been broken, he had no way of powering up the cabinet. Even the river seemed to mock him with its continuous flow toward the gulf, as if to say, “Even I can escape hell.”

  He grew dizzy from circling the penthouse. Sanguine and Serephine had left, disappearing over some horizon without leaving him any hint of how to reach them. The gatekeepers had all fulfilled their duties as they saw fit. Only Kendell might still meet with him, and she wasn’t likely to talk with him unless he first bowed down and kissed her feet.

  Her inattention is an advantage. He stood still to let the thought fully form. Like Sanguine after having sex, Kendell would have her back turned to him. She wouldn’t be hanging out at the voodoo perfumery, waiting for him. Delphine, however, never left the premises. Her assistance wasn’t assured, but she had secretly made it possible for him to interact with the puppets that filled his reality. As he stared out into the Quarter, his adrenaline started combating his irritation—both mental and physical. Contacting that voodoo witch is at least worth a try. Anything is better than pacing this damn cage.

  Though the galoshes hurt going on, they provided the right amount of protection while leaving enough room for his swollen feet and ankles. He caught himself in the mirror: hair disheveled, skin covered in welts and scratches, bathrobe caked in the Quarter’s slop, and mud boots to complete the look of a homeless person in need of psychiatric help. “At least I won’t get mugged.” The pathetic joke made him laugh so hard he had to hold his stomach. The cackling hurt his ears, but he found it impossible to stop.

  He forced his way out of the condo, hoping the change of scenery would distract his mind from its off-handed attempt at humor. Right. No more jokes.

  Walking along the streets felt like being pelted with lava. The human projections had become more substantial, but even they had confused looks on their faces. Each person he passed was like an actor in a play who’d forgotten his or her lines. He had no sympathy for any of them. Whatever they were experiencing, at least they could still function.

  Colin kept his hands in the pockets of his robe and busted open the door to Scratch and Sniff with his shoulder. At midafternoon, the place was deserted. Delphine didn’t
usually wander over from the other side of the shotgun double until dusk. In the back room, he fell into the chair to wait for her.

  He stared at the voodoo totem he’d pulled out of the case. Its horrendous sewn-shut leather eyes and mouth made him wonder what the statue would say about his predicament if it could talk. “Have I mentioned how much I hated being stuck in you?”

  Though Delphine’s shop provided no more protection than his condo, at least it was a change of scenery. “I have to get out of this hell. They’ve left me no other choice. Without power and the cane, I can’t turn this place into a realm for immortals. And this itching will drive me even more mad than I presently am.” His head drooped to the side. Looking past the wooden head, he saw all the other totems in the case. “I wonder how many other devils…”

  The glint of light from the small silver skull made him catch his breath. That can’t be possible. Are my jailors really that foolish?

  He got out of the chair without taking his eyes off the small headpiece nestled behind the much larger totems. The cabinet door swung open with barely a touch as if inviting him to take what he wanted.

  His hand shook as he reached between the wooden heads to the silver skull. He lifted it free of the shelf. “No security system at all?” For a second, he suspected he was being set up, but this wasn’t the first time he’d borrowed something from Scratch and Sniff without any negative outcome. His consequence-free snagging of her totems for use in creating the World Trade Center paranormal power plant had proven that Delphine would turn a blind eye to his activities. He turned in his hand the hollow skull made of beaten pieces of eight. It was a welcome reminder of his life as Baron Malveaux, his hundred years in Guinee, and his brief return in the living in the body of Myles Garrison. “I’d know you in any dimension. The question is, where’s your cane?”

  If it was in hell, the skull would lead him to it. Even better, if it was still among the living, he could use the connection to pass back into the realm of real people. Colin turned to the shop entrance in the next room and wondered if it really could be that simple.

  He walked through the shop, skull in hand, and cautiously opened the front door, anticipating some new nightmare. Very little appeared different than the street he’d escaped. He took a deep breath of the cool air. It didn’t burn his nose, throat, and lungs as it had when he’d entered the building. Heartened by the first success, he left the shop. People looked at him out of the corners of their eyes as they passed by. After all the time he’d spent not being noticed, the secretive glances were like spotlights.

  “What, you’ve never seen a man in a bathrobe before?” Yelling only made the pedestrians hurry faster down the sidewalk. Their fear of him threatened to restart his out-of-control laughter.

  This could just as easily be another delusion. Kendell and Sanguine do love putting on their little plays. Only one way to be sure. He stiffened his bent fingers and took a swipe at a woman passing by, like a cat trying to scratch an unsuspecting guest walking down the family’s hallway. He missed.

  “Freak.” The woman ran across the street as fast as her fashionable shoes would allow.

  A heavyset college-aged dude in a Saints T-shirt took Colin’s arm. “Hey, buddy, do we need to get you some help?”

  Colin tried to bite the hand, but it was too far away. “I need to taste your blood. Just a drop would do. I promise I’m not crazy.”

  “Of course you’re not. It’s perfectly normal to act like a homeless vampire in New Orleans. Now, why don’t you let me help you find your lair.”

  “I’m not a fucking vampire.” But as Colin thought about explaining how he was the devil just escaped from hell and only wanted a taste of blood to confirm he’d returned to life, he wondered if accepting the title of vampire might be more believable.

  The young man let go of Colin’s arm. “Hey, I’m just trying to help. We’ve all been on bad trips before, old man.”

  “Who are you calling old? Do you know who I am?” But with a glance at his freed arm, Colin noticed his skin wasn’t as tight and supple as he remembered. Wrinkled, splotchy, and more gray than pink, his flesh looked like that of his grandparents. The muscular dude’s handprint where he’d grabbed Colin’s arm was an anemic white.

  “Dude, just sleep it off, okay? I don’t want to have to call the cops on you, but if you try to take a bite out of someone else, you’re not going to leave me any choice. And you might want to find a better place to hang out. Delphine de Galpion doesn’t like bums sleeping on her doorstep. Most of your people hang out under the freeway overpass.”

  Colin pulled his bathrobe tighter around his body. “I’m not homeless.”

  “That’s good. Let me call you a cab so they can take you home. I’m sure someone must be pretty worried about you right now. Did you sleep in the gutter last night?”

  This guy is really getting on my nerves. “Look, I’ll be fine.”

  But once the Good Samaritan left and Colin no longer had his anger to focus on, everything started spinning. He fell against the shuttered window of Delphine’s shop and passed out.

  * * *

  When Colin came to, he found himself bound to a chair with Delphine holding a sword to his chest. At least it isn’t flaming. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  She pressed the tip between the lapels of his bathrobe and drew a spot of blood. “First, making sure it’s really you. You’ve aged.”

  “So I’ve been told. Mind taking the point of that blade out of my chest?”

  She twisted the tip. “For now, we’ll keep things as they are. That includes the skull in your pocket.”

  He could feel the lump of silver pulling at his bathrobe. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Haven’t you wondered why you’re still relatively clearheaded? Once I take that bobble from you, this reality is going to make your hell look like a playground. The connection to the cane is all that’s allowing you to hold on to the last of your sanity.”

  Even with the threat of death at his chest, he breathed a little easier. “I suppose I should thank you for leaving it for me. Now, how are we going to go about getting the cane?”

  She pressed the tip deeper into his skin. “You really are incredible. Do you honestly believe I had anything to do with letting you out of hell?”

  “Stop playing with me. Of course you put the silver skull in your curio cabinet for me to use. Who else could have done it, and why?”

  She frowned at him and didn’t answer, as if expecting him to figure it out on his own.

  The answer can’t be that obvious. “Why would Myles want me back among the living? He made it clear that this is the last place he wants me.” Colin looked around to see if there was anyone else in the room. “If it was Myles, Kendell, or any of their gang of idiots, they didn’t do a very good job. Now, get me out of these ropes so we can get to work.”

  She eased the sword out of his flesh but kept it aimed at his heart. “I told you from the beginning, my allegiance is to Marie Laveau and her alone.”

  “Fine, but my money has come in awfully handy to you in the past.” With Delphine, it was always a matter of spinning his plan to make Madam Laveau look like the ultimate mastermind. “Once I’ve got the cane back, I’ll defeat the loas of the dead. Isn’t that what Marie wanted all along—to take our fate into our own hands?”

  She didn’t break eye contact as she leaned in and took the silver headpiece from his pocket. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

  As she plunged the sword into his chest, Colin’s consciousness melded with his blood. He felt the thick life force drain from his heart, run down the length of the blade, enter the totem’s mouth at his back, fall down the hollow wooden throat, and finally, fill the spirit jar in its stomach.

  “No!” But the word only echoed in his being without finding an outlet.

  The sticky black tar walls, smell of rotting flesh mixed with rum, and overwhelming despair hadn’t changed much f
rom when he’d been condemned to the totem as Baron Malveaux. This is the second time that voodoo witch has cast me into this fetish, but she’s clearly not skilled enough to have created it.

  “Where are you, old witch? You must be here somewhere. Delphine never made a threat she couldn’t keep.” His prison cell transformed into an elegant parlor. He didn’t need any introduction to the woman in African dress who sat on the throne in the middle of the room. “It’s been a long time. Mind explaining what I’m doing back here?”

  Marie Laveau had the same aura of regal authority he remembered from his days as Baron Malveaux. “Righting a wrong I committed long ago. You were never supposed to have that cane. The prophecies weren’t about you. Even I didn’t always read the signs correctly. My arrogance prevented you from getting the death you deserved. Then the loas got involved. The whole ugly affair has haunted me ever since. I set this totem up for the day I knew we’d meet so I could explain the situation. Looks like my patience has finally paid off.”

  For all of the enshrined history about the voodoo queen, Colin had always found her more down-to-earth than any religious person he’d met. “So what’s your plan now that you have me? Please don’t say you’re just going to turn me over to the loas of the dead. That doesn’t sound very sporting.”

  “I’m not going to do anything,” she said. “My time has passed. Someone needed to set you straight on Baron Samedi’s cane. You keep thinking all you have to do is gain possession and the powers will be yours. Even in the short time that Myles Garrison has had it, you must have noticed how much better he is with it than you ever were. The cane is only a symbol of power, not the power itself. No matter what you do, you’ll never have the command of the staff that you envision. Magic doesn’t reside within an object. A thing only manifests what’s inside a person’s soul, like a magnifying glass focusing light into a burning point. You need to have the correct energy source matched up with the right lens. You and the cane were never a good fit. Perhaps that’s what drove you to evil. For my part in that history, I’m sorry.”