Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3

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Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 57

by Melissa Scott


  "It takes you that way sometimes," Lewis said, and he did know. "You see things you just can't think about anymore, so you forget. You've got to. If you remembered you'd just keep on remembering. So you don't. You shut it off and put it in a box."

  Al nodded. "I get that. I just don't know what's happened now."

  "The necklace opened the box," Lewis said grimly.

  There was a house. It was three blocks from the streetcar line, down a tree lined side street. No lights shone in the windows. Why would they? It was three o'clock in the morning. It was a very nice house, Stasi thought. It had double porches and a wrought iron fence, the finials of the posts decorated like the Berlin Iron of the necklace. The paint was faded in places, and there was a crack in one of the bricks of the walk. Time didn't stand still, and here like everywhere there were the marks of the Depression, paint jobs deferred, minor repairs left for another, more prosperous day.

  "Is this your house?" Stasi asked quietly as Mitch opened the iron gate. A little faded sign by the gate proclaimed its name: Eden.

  "No," he said. His voice was also low. "I'm just staying here."

  "Oh." Friends of his. That would be good. Perhaps they'd have a telephone and know what to do. Stasi followed him up the walk and up the five brick steps onto the porch. Bougainvillea bushes grew up around it and jasmine twined around the columns, small white blossoms lending fragrance to the night.

  Mitch knocked on the door. "Milly?"

  There was no answer. The house was quiet. The neighborhood was quiet. Not a dog barked. There were no sounds of cars, no sound but the wind through the branches of the big old trees.

  "Milly?" Mitch knocked again.

  "She's probably asleep," Stasi whispered. "It's three in the morning."

  "Milly!" He raised his voice, banging on the door with his fist. "Let me in! Milly!"

  "Maybe we should come back later," Stasi said. "Mitch…"

  "Milly! Milly! Open the door!"

  At this rate someone in the neighborhood would be calling the cops. "I think we should…" Stasi began.

  "Milly! Open up! Milly!"

  The door opened and for a moment Stasi stood there speechless. There was a man in a bathrobe, a flashlight in his hand, which he shone in their faces. "Milly doesn't live here anymore," he said genially. "She moved to Bienville Parish when she got married ten years ago."

  Mitch flinched at the light. "Married? Ten years ago?"

  The light played over his face. "Mitchell Sorley," the man said evenly. "Well, this is a surprise."

  "Jeff," Mitch said.

  The light hit her in the eyes. "And Miss Ivanova. An even better surprise. Should I trust you've brought my necklace?"

  "Mr. Lanier," Stasi said, and was proud that she could toss her head.

  "You know each other?" Mitch asked.

  "He's the man who hired me to find Kershaw's necklace," Stasi said.

  "My necklace," Lanier said sharply. "It was in my family for a hundred years before Milly sold it. She had no right. She sold it and kept the money for herself, used it to help that husband of hers open a car dealership! She had no right at all." He smiled at Stasi. "So I hired you to get it back, fair and square. Have you got it?"

  Stasi nodded.

  Mitch looked at her. "You have Milly's necklace?"

  "It's not Milly's," Lanier snapped. "It belongs to the family. She had no right to sell it."

  "Mr. Lanier," Stasi began. "There's a curse on it, you see…"

  "I know all about the curse," he said, holding out his hand. "We all do. Believe me, no one will be more careful with the necklace than I."

  Mitch shook his head. "I thought you'd gone into a sanitarium. That's what Milly said."

  Lanier's face changed, hardened. "She put me in one after the war. That wasn't right either. It wasn't right, locking her own brother up like that! She blamed me, you see, for what you did."

  "Milly was a good person," Mitch said. His voice slurred a little, much the worse for drink.

  "Milly was a spoiled little brat," Lanier snapped. "I never told on you. I never ratted you out. You were my brother in arms, and I never said a word."

  "Jeff," Mitch said. "No."

  Lanier looked at Stasi. "Has he told you? Has he told you what he is? Leading Milly on, getting his jollies on the sickness of it all?"

  "No," Mitch said quietly. "That wasn't what happened."

  "Has he told you?" Lanier shouted. "Has he told you he's a goddamned eunuch? He had his balls shot off in the war. I let him stay with me, brother in arms, and he went after my sister and then when he couldn't get it done, he moved on to carving up whores in Storyville with an axe!"

  Mitch opened his mouth but nothing came out, and Stasi flinched.

  "Give me the necklace!" Lanier shouted. "Give it to me now!"

  Mitch rushed him.

  Lanier hadn't seen it coming and Mitch was bigger, a tackle that sent the flashlight flying and both of them crashing into the door.

  "Oh hell," Stasi said, and got out of the way. The necklace spilled out of Mitch's pocket, glittering cold and evil on the boards of the porch. She scooped it up.

  Lanier scrambled up, grasping for something inside the door, a small trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth. "I'll kill you," he said. "I will." Something equally dark and deadly glimmered in his hand as he rummaged on the hall table.

  "Come on!" Stasi grabbed Mitch by the hand, dragging him to his feet and down the steps. The shot went over their heads, slicing through the leaves of the tree above as they ran for their lives.

  Lewis tensed, his head going up like a hunting dog's. "That was a shot," he said.

  "North of here," Alma said. They stood on the sidewalk a block from Kindred Hospital, watching the tail lights of the cab disappear.

  "You want to bet?" Lewis asked.

  "I wouldn't bet against it," Alma sighed. They must have covered sixty blocks tonight, all told. Running was out of the question, but they could probably manage a brisk walk. "Let's go."

  Well, Stasi thought, I'm in a cemetery in the middle of the night with an axe murderer. Life does have its little quirks.

  They'd run down first one street and then another, dodging one more shot and trying to stay in the shadow of the trees, but short of barging into a house there really wasn't much cover. Of course there were bushes and plants, fences and flowers, but they were as much hindrance as help. Blossoms fell, leaving a trail. Roots were something to trip over. And towering live oaks didn't provide much of a place to hide unless you were Tarzan, which she decidedly wasn't. Ducking behind a tree truck might work for a pursued ingénue in the movies, but it didn't work in real life, not for two people with one of them drunk and both of them winded. The gates of Lafayette Cemetery offered the perfect refuge.

  Unlike most cemeteries Stasi had seen in the United States, Lafayette Cemetery seemed mostly above ground rather than a graveyard. Mausoleums large and small glimmered white in the dark, marble reflecting palely. It was like a city of the dead, streets green with grass between crumbling monuments, walls of vaults stacked four high, each body behind a neat plaque. It was like cemeteries in Europe meant for feasting the dead on tombstones with walks where children could run shouting between the bones of their ancestors. There were plenty of places to hide. Unfortunately it was a little hard to hide when you had an axe murderer noisily being sick on a wrought iron fence beside you.

  Stasi looked anxiously up and down the "street." Not a shadow moved. The mausoleums were silent, their white edges marked sharp against the dark of a few towering magnolia trees. Perhaps they'd lost him. It was possible.

  Mitch straightened up. "I feel better," he said. Whether that was the result of being sick or getting rid of the necklace was a moot point.

  "Good," Stasi said.

  There was a step, a sudden movement, and a bullet came singing along the row, plunking into a mausoleum, sending shards of the facing marble flying. Mitch knocked her flat between two pla
tform tombs.

  "Ow," Stasi said.

  "Keep your head down!"

  "I'm keeping it down!"

  "And be quiet!"

  "You were the one who started talking!"

  "He has a gun and we don't," Mitch said. He was rather heavy to have on top of one. Also, he didn't smell particularly good.

  "Oh well observed! I hadn't noticed he had a gun," Stasi whispered furiously.

  Footsteps coming closer.

  "How about we get out of here?"

  "What an idea!"

  Mitch clambered to his feet and she dragged herself after him, dodging around the corner of a mausoleum just as Lanier reached the end.

  "I know you're here," he called. "Miss Ivanova, I've got no quarrel with you. You can leave if you want. This is between me and Mitchell Sorley."

  Stasi slipped around the back corner of another tomb, drawing Mitch after her. That put two between them and Lanier.

  "You should go," Mitch whispered in her ear.

  "You think I believe him?" Stasi whispered incredulously. "He'll let me go when hell freezes over. I'm the one who knows that he hired me to steal the necklace."

  Another series of steps. He was coming closer.

  "I could get the jump on him."

  "And get shot."

  She could see Lanier's shadow thrown against the opposite wall, gun extended. No, anybody going for it might take the shot at point blank range.

  Instead she backed away, trying to make no sound, pulling Mitch along. At least he seemed soberer. He'd lost his hat, and the shadows through the magnolia branches shifted across his face as she drew him along, tiptoeing among the tombs.

  Around another set of tombs, across a path and between the next set. These were newer tombs, only a few decades old. 1890 gleamed out at her from incised marble letters. Larger ones too, providing more shelter. There was no sound. Who knew where Lanier was?

  There was a sudden movement ahead and Stasi shrank back.

  Not Lanier.

  The woman stood in the shadow of a monstrous live oak, beside a marble urn that graced a mausoleum, dark hair falling in ringlets around her face, a fan in her other hand. Her white dress glimmered like moonlight in the dark, and her eyes found Stasi's unerringly as she raised one hand to her neck.

  "Who are you?" Stasi whispered.

  "My name is Emilie." She tipped her head, the gesture of a coquette in days gone by, as antique as her century-old dress.

  "Who are you talking to?" Mitch whispered, looking around.

  "The Dead," Stasi said.

  The woman took a step closer, stronger and more solid. "I can help you," she said.

  "Why would you do that?" Stasi asked, and then she knew. "You're one of the necklace's victims."

  "Emilie Rose Angelique Marie Daigle Lanier," she said. "I am the third woman it killed." She took another step closer, her eyes not leaving Stasi's. "I was killed in my theater box by my husband because he thought I had a lover. He lost his temper and stabbed me." She stopped, swaying in her long pale skirts.

  "Lanier," Stasi said.

  "What?" Mitch said, glancing around wildly.

  "My son was twenty months old," Emilie said. "He was raised by my sister when my husband was hanged. Until the necklace killed her too." She opened her fan like a gesture of long habit, a secret smile crossing her face. "She's named for me, you know. Milly. Emilie. That's her real name but they call her Milly. She escaped. She got rid of the necklace. Maybe it will never touch her or her girls either. She has two daughters now, away in St. Bienville. And I thought the curse was finally done."

  "It's not," Stasi said grimly.

  "Who are you talking to?" Mitch whispered again.

  "A ghost," Stasi said. "And maybe she can help us. Now hush."

  "I can help you," she said. "And I will help you if you'll promise to take that necklace far away from here and lock it away."

  "We can promise that," Stasi said. "But not if we don't get away from your descendant. He's trying to shoot us."

  "I know." Emilie lifted her head, looking down the long row of tombs. "He hasn't been right since the war. It takes some men that way." She glanced back at Stasi. "But isn't it so pretty? Nothing like the shadow of old blood to make a man attractive. It does lend an air of virility."

  "Yes, well, right now he's going to shoot us," Stasi said. "We need a place to hide until morning, or we need to get out of here without him seeing us."

  "Hiding is better," Emilie said. "There's only one entrance and you'd have to go past him to get to it. And frankly you're not that quiet." She glanced at Mitch appraisingly. "Or that sober."

  "Yes, I've noticed," Stasi said.

  "Noticed what?" Mitch demanded in a whisper.

  "That you're blotto. Now be quiet and let me talk." She squeezed his hand tightly.

  "I suppose I am," Mitch said thoughtfully.

  Emilie shook her head. "Men! They're all the same," she said in her lilting accent. "I've seen this one before. He's a big boy, isn't he?"

  "Are we going to gossip or are you going to help us hide?" Stasi asked. "Because frankly we don't have all night."

  "Come this way." Emilie turned, slipping between two mausoleums. "Quietly."

  "This way," Stasi said, dragging Mitch behind her. He didn't resist, just followed after like Theseus on the thread.

  Between tombs, around corners, down a long avenue where a wall was filled with tombs four high, like a catacomb only above ground, each one marked with names and dates, into the older part of the cemetery. The tombs were closer together here, a neoclassical façade almost wall to wall with the ones beside it. Over the door was a Latin inscription, and before it an empty urn.

  "Here," Emilie said. "The door will open if you give it a little push. They didn't get it quite to catch the last time they came."

  "Are you sure about this?" Mitch asked, swaying a little in the moonlight, bareheaded and rough looking. "In a tomb?"

  "It's all right," Stasi said, glancing at Emilie. "The owner doesn't mind." She pushed on the bronze door and it gave on well-oiled hinges. She went in and closed the door behind them. It was pitch black.

  "There," Emilie said. "Now you stay here until morning, and I'll go lead him off."

  "You can do that?" Stasi whispered.

  Emilie laughed. "Of course I can," she said. "He's my own bone and blood. I'll keep you safe until dawn, and you make sure that necklace leaves New Orleans."

  "Deal," Stasi said. There was a warm breeze, or rather the absence of Emilie's cold.

  "What's the deal?" Mitch asked. He was breathing hard.

  "It's a long story," Stasi said. "But we should be safe now. Do you still have your lighter?"

  There was the sound of fumbling, and then the Ronson lit, Mitch looking around in the narrow space.

  It was quite nice, actually, and not ghoulish at all. There were six spaces, three to each side, each covered in a marble slab with names and dates. Stasi traced the first one, not at all surprised. "Emilie Rose Angelique Marie Daigle Lanier, August 4, 1797 — January 8, 1826."

  Mitch put his hand out to steady himself. "That's the ghost you were talking to?"

  "Your Milly's great grandmother ," Stasi said. Her fingers slid down the marble to the one beneath it. "Charles Felix Daigle, 1769 — 1834. He followed the eagles." The marble was smooth and hardly worn at all. "Her father, I suppose."

  "Another sister?" Mitch said, looking at the other side. "Victoire Louise Justine Daigle? They're all Daigles here."

  "Of course they are, darling," Stasi said, sinking down to sit with her back to the tombs. "Every last one of them following the eagles." She looked up at him. "Why don't you sit down before you fall down?"

  "That might be a good idea," Mitch said. "Ouch!" The light went out abruptly as the Ronson got too hot. She felt rather than heard him slid down beside her.

  "Oh, my feet," Stasi said, folding her legs and massaging her instep. "Give me the lighter, darling. I think I
saw a votive candle over here." She felt around in the dark until she found the glass, leaning across Mitch's lap. There was a little puddle of wax in the bottom as she'd hoped. "There."

  His hand bumped her breast. "Sorry," he said. "Trying to give you the lighter. I can't see."

  "Because it's dark," Stasi said, taking the lighter and flicking it, coaxing the little bit of candle left to light. It caught at last, a faint gold and blue flame at the bottom of the glass. "Isn't that better?"

  Mitch leaned his head back against the mausoleum and closed his eyes, his face gray.

  "We'll just wait him out," Stasi said. "It can't be more than three hours until dawn."

  "Sure."

  She looked at him closely. "Are you all right, darling?"

  Mitch didn't open his eyes. "For a drunk lunatic in a fugue state, I'm doing pretty well."

  "What's my name?"

  He almost smiled. "I have no idea," he said. "You said your name was Rostov but Jeff called you Ivanova, and I wouldn't take any bets on either one being true. What's your real name?"

  "Darling, that's like asking a woman her real age," Stasi said. Oh her feet hurt. But any one you could walk away from was a good one. "Let's try this. What's Lanier's real name and how to you know him?"

  He still didn't open his eyes. "Jefferson Murat Lanier," Mitch said. "I was in the army with him. He was transferred out of the Veneto to the Western Front. I ran into him again after the war. He and his sister had inherited that house in the Garden District, Eden. I stayed with them for a while." He moved his head a little, like a man in a dream. "I don't know how long, so don't ask me. And I don't know why I left or when. Gil had been wiring me, asking me to come to Colorado Springs. At some point I did. Couldn't tell you why. I don't remember most of 1919 and part of 1920. Jeff's right that I'm a certifiable lunatic."

  "Oh," Stasi said. She moved her toes back and forth. Yes, they still moved. "And he thinks you…seduced his sister?" she asked delicately.

  Mitch's mouth thinned, closed eyes twitching. "I'm pretty sure I didn't do that."

  "Ah," Stasi said. She took a deep breath, leaning back against the stone beside him. "And that's where you saw the cursed necklace before."

 

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