by Chris Lowry
He actually backed up, and tripped off the curb, fell flat on his ass in the street, black eyes blinking in panic.
“No man, no way.”
I took a step forward to help him up and he cringed.
“I’m just here with a message man,” he said with the words almost running together. “Claude sent me.”
I stopped and figured I would just hold tight before me trying to help killed the poor guy.
“What do you have for me?”
He took his time getting up, brushing off the bottom of the flowing pj’s.
“An address,” he said. “But he didn’t tell me what it was for.”
I held out a hand.
He took a double take at the extended index finger and stepped to one side as he approached the gate. I could reach through the wards with just the slightest tingle in my forearm.
He put a folded piece of elegant stationary in my hand and jumped back.
“That it?”
The thrall nodded.
“You got a home to go to?”
More nodding.
“Then get gone.”
I pulled my arm back in and almost heard the spiritual pop of the ward resealing once I was through. We watched the kid run down the street and slip around the corner.
“Do you think it’s the blood that makes them cattle, or is it the drugs that make them easier prey?” Elvis observed from above me.
I turned and found him floating head down.
“I think it’s a combo.”
He nodded, chin bobbing up to his chest.
“There a reason you’re floating that way?”
I walked back toward the house. The ghost let the tether tug him along rather than expend any energy floating.
“The vampire thrall has me thinking about blood,” he said. “If I hang upside down, the blood will rush to my head.”
I paused on the porch and stared at him.
“Do ghosts have blood?”
He screwed up his eyes and lifted until we were eye to eye again, his mouth talking into my forehead, the bells of his bellbottoms disappearing into the wood slats of the roof.
“You know, I don’t know,” he answered. “If you cut me, do I not bleed.”
“I can’t cut a ghost.”
“Not even with magic?”
I shrugged.
“Never tried.”
“I can’t remember if I ever read it,” he took a deep breath, held it and shot it through his nose. I didn’t feel a breeze, nothing. Ghosts don’t really breathe, Elvis was just mimicking the memory of what he used to do automatically.
“I don’t know if I knew it before and can’t recall it, or if I never researched it in the first place. Have we dealt with ghosts before?”
I shook my head.
“Not many, and I never asked you to look that up. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind to search for ghost blood.”
He rolled around in the air and floated back to his normal spot, just a little taller than me because his feet didn’t touch the ground.
“It was a long shot,” he said.
I dragged the sad pitiful spirit into the house.
Hannah waited, a steaming mug of coffee in each hand. She passed one to me.
“Nectar of the gods,” she grinned over the rim and sipped the clarifying liquid.
“If you only knew how right you were,” I said sipping my own.
I have a passion for craft beer, but coffee is an addiction. The love affair went back to my youth, when work on the orphanage farm was expected if we wanted to eat.
Back then, coffee and kids went together just as well as adults, without all the annoying lectures from medical establishments about the effects of caffeine on growing bodies.
The Father liked his coffee black, strong enough to eat a hole in the stomach, and hot enough to keep the local fire brigade on standby. It was like pouring electricity in the vein, and allowed a group of kids to get a lot of chores done before lessons.
I carried that addiction through the Army and the Sidhe War, and every morning I was able since.
She made a good cup. Black like I liked it, but there was a hint of something extra.
“Chicory,” she said as she noticed the appreciation on my face.
I gave her a grin and finished half the cup.
“Coffee was a gift from the gods,” I told her.
If I hoped to impress her with my smarts, she wasn’t having it. She probably was one cup ahead of me on the joe anyway, because if I had a full cup of that chicory laced delish in my belly, I would have realized she was a reader, and the tomes scattered around the room covered a lot of different topics.
“One of the legends of Prometheus is he stole coffee and gave it to man, not fire,” her eyes sparkled in mischief.
“Coffee is fire in the veins if you do it right,” I shot back. “This weak stuff you serve is good for you lightweights.”
She smirked in mock irritation and slugged my bicep, spilling coffee onto the folded stationary in my hand.
“Oops,” she said.
She reached out and took the coffee mug from me.
“If you don’t like it, there’s a shop up the street. Serves mud, but if you’re like my dad, that’s what you army guys like.”
I flicked my fingers and magicked the cup back into my fist.
“I’ll finish this first since I’m your guest. It’s only polite.”
“No fair,” she swatted me again.
This time I managed to keep the coffee in the cup, then in my mouth as I carried it and the paper over by the fireplace.
I put the mug on the mantle and unfolded the sheet of thick paper. It looked old, fashionable when Dickens was using the inkwell to tell tales of two cities and paid a pound per word.
The script was neat and elegant.
“Penmanship is a lost art,” Elvis sighed as he read over my shoulder.
“What does it say?” the Watcher asked me from the other side. “Do you feel a draft in here? I can stoke the fire.”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “It’s just an address to check on later tonight.”
“The Vampire?”
I nodded.
“Do you trust him.”
I had to think about that. Trust was a funny thing when it came to the spirit world. In most instances, someone’s word was law, and promises irrevocable on pain of intense retribution.
And vampires had the whole favor layer factored in.
“Trust?” I waved my hand back and forth in a see saw motion. “But verify.”
A sealed envelope slid under the door with a slight scratch.
We both stared at it for a moment, shocked.
“The wards?” she said.
I ran to the door and yanked it open, a spell ready to blast whatever creature had managed to make it through her protection spells.
But the porch was empty.
So was the yard. And the street beyond.
Hannah bent to retrieve the paper and I stopped her.
“It could be cursed,” I said and sent a feeler toward it.
There was a hint of magic, but like a dusting left in someone passing. The envelope itself was not inherently magic.
“It’s clean,” I said and snapped my fingers.
The envelope floated up on a breeze and I caught it.
“Cool trick.”
I pulled the wax seal holding the edges together. NOLA was full of mysteries, the least of not which was how were so many still using archaic traditions to communicate. Two missives scratched on stationary, one hand delivered by a messenger, one with a wax seal I didn’t know delivered by a mystery.
It was from the Gnome.
“Knu wants to see me,” I told Hannah and handed her the two words scratched on a cream colored card stock.
“It just says COME.”
“I get the point.”
I went back to the sofa and fished out my boots to slip on. Hannah refilled my coffee in a to go cup.<
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“Want me to drive?”
I shook my head.
“The walk will do me good.”
I took the coffee from her, but she didn’t let it go right away.
“I want to thank you for last night,” she ducked her head, a blush creeping up her cheeks.
“We didn’t do anything last night.”
“Yes, but I wanted to. I know it’s not very ladylike, but,” she chewed on her lip. “I was lonely and wanted to feel something, and my mom says I’ve got this whole power thing fetish.”
I didn’t know what to say, so she kept going.
“You could have taken advantage of the way I was feeling, and I wanted you to, but I’m glad you didn’t. Does that make sense?”
I shook my head.
She harrumphed.
“I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either. To want something and to be glad it didn’t happen. But there it is. And well, I just wanted to say thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“If you come back tonight, I’ll try not to be so bold.”
I waved the vampire’s note in hand, and stuck it in the pocket of my bomber as I slipped it on, juggling the coffee.
“Meeting tonight.”
“Need me for back up?”
“Watchers need to be protected,” Elvis said.
She shivered.
“I’ll get you if I do.”
Hannah curled her arms around her shoulders and squeezed.
“I’m going to have to check for leaks in the doors and windows today,” she shivered again.
“I think it’s going to get warmer today. Might not matter,” I told her, trying to save her some time.
She leaned in, kissed me on the cheek as I walked out of the front door and popped through the wards at the fence.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
The thrall showed up before the sun did which meant I was out of the door and heading toward the Gnome’s place as the sun rose. It was one of my favorite times of the day, and the walk was pleasant through the stirring streets of a city with over two hundred years of history.
I remembered legends of New Orleans from my youth, jazz clubs and razors in boots, Cajun prostitutes and a mélange of different cultures washed up on the muddy banks of the Mississippi River.
I could see hints of it in the architecture, each block influenced by a different time and place, and some of it so modern it created a bridge to the past.
By the time the big orange ball dribbled in the horizon and sent blasts of burning magic across the landscape, I was in front of Knu’s shop.
The door was open and she was waiting for me.
“You didn’t bring me any?” she indicated the cup.
I turned it upside down to show her it was empty.
“You took long enough to arrive,” she shut the shop behind her and led me back into the street.
“I came as soon as I got the note?”
She snorted.
“That damn pixie,” she laughed. “I sent her hours ago.”
Pixies were notorious for being flighty, both in a literal and figurative sense. Give a pixie a task, and if they stayed on it, the thing could be done in a flash.
Send that same pixie past something shiny and you could lose your timetable just as fast.
The Gnome knew how her messenger would react. Probably even did some scrying to see when the note would pop under the door.
“I had a visit from a thrall before sunup,” I told her, even though I would bet she already knew. “The pixie was playing it safe.”
“Meeting at midnight?”
She said it as a question, but it was more like a confirmation of something she had seen before.
I nodded.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she warned me and said as much as she dared share.
The problem with the future for someone who knows it is easily summed up with the story of the merchant in a Middle Eastern bazaar who sees death near his stall.
Death reacts, startled to see the man, and so to escape his fate, he takes off on a horse and rides it to death to another city.
That night, he sees Death in the city and says, “I can’t escape. You’ve got me. But tell me why you reacted at my stall?”
And Death answered, “Because I had an appointment to collect you here tonight and I was surprised to see you there.”
Or as I like to put it.
There is no fate but what you make.
If you know what you’re doing. The trouble was, no one really knew what they were doing, as far as the future was concerned. A good intention today turns into an unforeseen repercussion downstream.
Prohibitionists wanted to save America’s soul, and created a gang war that built the mafia and killed hundreds of thousands in the decades since.
Good idea. Bad execution.
Scratch that, anyone who wanted to outlaw beer was a soulless demon, probably in the employ of the Sidhe.
So bad idea, worse execution.
But I would bet every single one of those hypocritical teetotalers would have said, “Nah, forget it,” if they knew shoving their morals down from a high horse would kill so many people later.
Or maybe not.
People were strange.
“Easy like Sunday morning,” Elvis hummed.
“Reminds me of something,” I told Knu. “Heard of any way to help a ghost keep his memories?”
“Your friend is slipping away?”
“There might not be any hope for him,” I said glancing at him. “But I thought I’d ask.”
“I’ll look into it,” she said and kept striding for our destination.
“Got to have faith, faith, faith,” sang Elvis.
Knu took us to one side of a famous café that bypassed the tourists and knocked on a window. It slid open and she passed a ten through, got two large cups of coffee in return.
“Locals only,” she winked and passed me a cup.
We carried them to Crescent park on the edge of the Mississippi River and sat across from each other at a picnic table as the morning kept waking up around us.
She let it be pleasant for a few moments, then took a deep breath, a sip of coffee and we got down to business.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
"I'm going to tell you something and it's going to blow your mind
hole."
Her eyes sparkled across from me at the picnic table. We could see tugs and barges chugging past from here, the noise abated by the distance and some strategically placed reeds along the banks that acted as sound absorbers.
The morning sun was bright, but we could see ugly grey clouds squatting to the horizon, the threat of a tropical storm churning off the coast.
Bad juju, I knew.
Something was stirring up the water.
"My mind hole is ready to be blown," I assured her.
After our last adventure together, when I saved her from mortal mafia assassins, I chalked Knu into the friend column, which was surprisingly light. I could tick off her, a Valkyrie and the dead ghost hanging out by my shoulder in that category.
The not friend’s column was a whole lot longer.
"The world of magic is a lot different than you think," she said.
I nodded.
I was a young pup in the world of magic, only almost a hundred. I bet this tiny little woman had me by a couple of centuries.
She smiled and the skin around her eyes crinkled.
"Ten times that," she said.
That kinda did blow my mind a little. I had to remember she could read minds if she wanted to. It was part of her act in the French Quarter, but all of her magic.
At least the part I knew about. If she was a couple of thousand years old, there was a lot I didn't know.
It also meant I was sitting in front of some super-duper power in an itty-bitty package.
"You don't look a day over a thousand," I said.
Her pupils widened a little and a real smile slip the
creased on her cheek revealing strong teeth, even if a little yellowed. She cackled.
"I didn't see that coming," she slapped the table. "No wonder the Judge likes you."
"He doesn't show it," I said.
She glanced up at the storm clouds.
"He wouldn't."
The smile slid off her face, though traces of it made her eyes twinkle in the twilight colored air around us.
"You would be surprised at how old I truly am, and yet I am young compared to some."
"It's all relative," I told her.
"No, I'm not related to anyone," she shot back. "No one left alive at least."
I almost told her I was joking but Elvis saved me.
"She's joking," he whispered in my ear.
She saw the goosebumps tickle the skin on my arm from that side of my body and snorted.
"The ghost is giving away all my good stuff."
"He's always been a little quick on the uptake. When he can remember."
"I recall," she said. "Now as to the knowledge that will blow your mind, give me your hand."
I reached across the table, palms up, expecting her to take a look at my lifeline. There were scars on the skin of each, cutting through the lines in several places.
As I expected, she studied them, then placed her hands in mine, intertwining our fingers and clamping tight.
"People might think we're going steady," I grinned. "I'm a bit old fashioned."
"Out of time and place," she nodded. "Welcome to the life I live."
Her grip grew tighter and hotter where our skin touched.
Under different circumstances, I would have tossed up a shield and a lightning bolt, but like I said, I knew this gnome from a long time ago. I trusted her.
"Your world is going to shatter," she warned me. "There is great pain coming for you."
Fantastic.
Nothing works up the old confidence level like prognostications of doom.
"The things you think you know are wrong. The things that you must learn are false. And when the time comes, you must decide."
She relaxed her grip but didn't let go of my hands.
"I know that doesn't help. The future is flexible and mostly malleable. Think of all the decisions you make in one day that have an impact downstream. Turn left instead of right, get hit by a bus. Order delivery instead of going out, and you get food poisoning."