Winds of Change Book Two

by Melissa Good

  So what did Dar see? Since her imagination tended to the prosaic, Kerry was pretty sure she’d seen something. Something that was alarming enough to get her out of bed and ready to—she glanced inside the open French doors where her beloved was studiously stirring her coffee—ready to defend her from whatever it was.

  Which was sort of charming. Kerry picked up her Handspring and reviewed her mails, which were refreshingly few. Most were focused on acknowledgements for pricing she’d provided, and a note from their landlord praising their new sign.

  It was nice to not have a knot in her guts every time the new message alert went off. She thought about how long she’d been living with that tension. “Hey, hon?”

  “Yes?” Dar came out and took the seat next to her, extending her denim covered legs with her socked feet out and crossing them at the ankles. “I went to the front desk on my way back from getting this coffee and those doughnuts.”

  Kerry licked her lips. “They were good.”

  “First time I saw carnival food presented in a French style cafe, but yes,” Dar said. “Anyway, I asked about tours and stuff and said we’d had a good time last night. The desk clerk mentioned this hotel was on one of the other outfit’s tours but they didn’t like it.”

  “Because they say this place is haunted?”

  “Yes,” Dar said. “So I told them I saw something on the balcony last night.”

  “Ah hah.”

  “I think she was waiting to see if I was going to freak out about it and when I didn’t, she coughed up the fact that maybe some other people who stayed here have mentioned that. It’s why they usually rent out these rooms to big groups who want to have a party.”

  “I see.”

  “Mm.” Dar sipped her coffee. “I said I didn’t care.”

  “Do you?” Kerry watched her curiously. “You really weren’t scared, were you?”

  “I wasn’t. Not sure why. Maybe I was still drunk. I should have been scared but I wasn’t.”

  “Dar, you’re never scared when it’s go time,” Kerry said in a placid tone. “I’ve watched you for years throwing yourself into situations starting with the night you saved my ass from being carjacked. You have more guts than sense sometimes.”

  Dar’s dark lashes fluttered a little and she watched Kerry from the corner of her eye. “Is that a bad thing?” she asked. “I remember you doing some crazy ass stunts, too, like diving in the water after that guy.”

  “Well...”

  Dar shrugged. “We’re two of a kind. Someone once said that. Maybe Alastair.” She rested her elbows on her chair arms. “So what do you want to do? Go find Madame PooPoo and get our fortunes told?”

  Kerry smiled. “Absolutely. I don’t think they have daytime ghost tours so let’s stick to stuffed animals, tacky beads and beignets today. In fact, can you show me where you got them?”

  “Sure. And I found this.” Dar handed over a pamphlet.

  “Boos and Booze tour?” Kerry started laughing. “Of the French Quarter. You really want to do that, hon? Ghosts more interesting now?”

  Dar grinned and shrugged “Yeah, maybe. I’m kind of wondering. As in, how is that possible? Is it an energy anomaly?”

  “You’re looking for a logical explanation for ghosts?” Kerry watched her smile and nod. “Okay, Boos! And Booze it is.” She checked the number, then dialed it on her phone. “My treat.”

  Dar rocked back and forth a little in contentment. Kerry had wakened without her headache and they’d enjoyed a shower together using the shower attachment in the charmingly old fashioned tub installed bathroom. “I think I want to go find a little protein with my funnel cakes,” she said as Kerry hung up. “Shall we?”

  “Absolutely, my little ghost busting chickadee.” Kerry finished her coffee and got up, extending her hand. “Let’s go find out what the future has in store for us,” she said. “And get you some bacon.”

  THEY STROLLED ALONG the street in the sunshine toward Jackson Square where a crowd was already gathering.

  “Beautiful day,” Kerry said peering along the wrought iron fence they were walking by. “Oh look, Dar. Artists.”

  Obligingly, Dar looked. “If we get a picture of us done by someone other than my mother, you get to explain it to her. Since we keep saying no.”

  Kerry put her hands behind her back and clasped them. “Good point.”

  Dar chuckled.

  “But we can get one of New Orleans.” She pointed. “See? Isn’t that pretty? It’s the parade.”

  Dar willingly followed her over to the artist, who had several examples of his art propped up against the fence. She wandered down the row as Kerry bargained for the piece, enjoying the antics of a street performer who was juggling while riding a unicycle.

  That took a lot of skill and balance and she appreciated that. She’d made one abortive attempt at unicycling herself way back when in college on a long weekend down in Key West. Even now, all the years later, she winced at the twitch in her tail bone that well remembered that colossal fall.

  “Hello dere, pretty lady.”

  Dar turned from watching the juggler to find a man at a folding table covered in a tie dye cloth straight from Haight Ashbury. He was reviewing some tarot cards and watching her with one bright, deep hazel eye, the other covered in a weathered patch.

  “Hi,” Dar responded after a brief pause. “Are you a fortune teller?”

  “Oh my, no.” The man smiled at her. He was probably in his sixties, with curly gray hair and a spare frame. “Sounds so carnival, does it not? Should I have a monkey, then, and man in the front calling people into the sideshow?”

  Dar folded her arms over her chest. “Didn’t mean that as an insult,” she said. “What do you call yourself then?”

  “I call myself Charles.” The man’s eye twinkled. “And you, pretty lady?”

  Dar allowed herself to be charmed and drawn in. “Dar.”

  “Now that’s a very unusual name,” Charles said, sorting the cards together and putting them away. “Is this your first time here in the great N’awlins?”

  “It is,” Dar said. “I thought I lived in the craziest place in the US until I saw this town. Impressive.” She indicated the chair across from him. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Charles’s nose crinkled up in a surprising grin. “Usually I have to coax people to take a seat. “Please sit, Ms. Dar.” He cleared off the table in front of him and leaned his elbows on it as she sat down and they regarded each other. “What can I answer for you? Is there a question you want to ask me?”

  Dar considered. “Tell me about this place.” She indicated the city with a brief hand gesture. “Why is it so different? What’s with all the ghost stories?”

  He blinked.

  “I’ve got some time and cash,” Dar added with a twinkle of her own. “My wife’s over there wrangling prices. I figure I can at least get some local information from something other than a tour pamphlet that’ll be worth the price.” She glanced at a passing cart. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Ms. Dar, I don’t know what our conversation will lead to, but I will surely use my professional skills to predict I will be having a very good time.” Charles laughed. “And I would love a drink. It’s been a thirsty morning already.”

  Dar pinned the cart pusher with a direct blue gaze and pointed, then raised two fingers. “Do you use those cards to tell people what’s going to happen to them?” she asked as the vendor hurried over. “Or, what they want you to tell them about what’s going to happen to them?”

  Charles studied her while she paid for the drinks. When she turned back around he was smiling. “Ms. Dar, you are an old soul,” he said. “I don’t see too many of those ‘round here these days.”

  “What does that mean?” Dar settled in to listen, curling her hands around the cup.

  “What does that mean?” Charles mused. “Sometime you meet people, talk to people, and they’re all on the surface. They ain’t been around, see what I’m sayin
g?”

  Dar let her chin rest on her fist. “Not really...well...” She thought about the question and Charles gave her space to do that. “Hard to say. My life mostly puts me in a space with high achievers.”

  “Not about smarts,” Charles said. “Can be the most no count, no school, depressed and raised in a trailer person, but they got a story in them. They got practice at this life thing.”

  “You talking about reincarnation?” Dar asked, curiously.

  “Am I?” he said. “Could be. Don’t cotton much to that. I more look to the old ways where earth’s part of you, you’re part of earth. But when I say I see an old soul, I mean there’s a piece of the earth’s history there in you.”

  That didn’t make sense to Dar but she kept quiet, waiting to see what else would be forthcoming. She certainly didn’t feel like she had any old knowledge in her.

  “So anyway, to your question,” Charles said. “Na’wlins is an old place and been a place full of hurting and bloodletting from all way back.” He looked up at her. “Know what that’s about?”

  “My daddy’s people are from east Alabama,” Dar said, then paused.

  Charles nodded. “See that? You got history in you. Go through places like that and the trees weep from it.”

  “They’ve been there a long time,” Dar said.

  He took a sip from the drink and put it down. “N’awlins is like that, too. Been a lot of heartache in these parts. Wars. Slaves. Pirates. Drowning. Magic.” He waited for her to react, but the angular, intent face across from him remained still. “Black magic. Things them people being put on used to make their lives a little less hell.”

  “A way for them to take a piece of themselves back?”

  Charles smiled. “Yes, Ms. Dar. When you ain’t got no power, you make your own.”

  “That I get,” Dar said.

  “So you have all this emotion,” he said. “All this misery, and so they say, it sticks. Them people who didn’t have joy in their lives, they stay around after to find it.” He gestured around him. “It’s a pretty place, no?”

  Dar smiled. “It is.”

  “Some people say, all them who die here stay here, ‘cause Heaven ain’t no better.” Charles smiled back. “But it’s true that you walk here, you look round a corner, behind a tree, up in a window...you see things.” He laced his fingers, his single eye watching her. “Foggy mornings walking here I see things.”

  Dar caught sight of Kerry’s distinctive little swagger heading her way. “You ever been to an old battlefield?” she asked him. “Valley Forge, or Antietam, or one of those?”

  “This here square was named for Andrew Jackson,” Charles said. “He and a bunch of men done beat the British not far off. War been here, but not so it’s like what you mean. You been?”

  “I have,” Dar said. “And a lot of people say they feel an atmosphere there. But I always wondered how much of that was because they did, and how much of that was because they expected to, because they knew what happened there. My college did a psychological study of that.”

  He cocked his head. “And?”

  Dar shrugged. “I wasn’t included. I knew. I’m from a military family,” she replied honestly. “But I never felt anything there.”

  “So, Ms. Dar, you’re a skeptic,” Charles said after a brief silence. “That what you’re saying?”

  “I live in a very rational world,” Dar said, sounding even to herself slightly apologetic. “I’m an engineer in the technology space. Logic comes with the territory.”

  “Whose territory?” Kerry arrived at her side and gave Charles a grin. “Hello.” She draped a hand on Dar’s shoulder. “They’re sending that picture home for us.”

  “Well, hello there.” Charles half rose, and bowed. “Please join us, ma’am.” He glanced at Dar. “Is this your lady?”

  “This is Kerry.” Dar looked up at her. “Charles and I were just talking about why there are so many supposed spooks here.

  “Did you tell him about your ghost last night?” Kerry asked, pressing her knee up next to Dar’s. “Maybe he knows about it.”

  Charles sat back down, looking from one of them to the other, his brows contracting. “Does Ms. Kerry live in your rational world, Ms. Dar? This is coming along to be very interesting.”

  Dar sighed. “There’s always exceptions.”

  “Maybe we should ask him about our thing.” Kerry’s eyes twinkled. “I think that’s an exception, too.”

  CHARLES, IT TURNED out, knew a guy. Or more to the point a woman who he said would give them their money’s worth in terms of getting their fortunes told.

  They were headed across Jackson Square, down one of the side streets to a small store that had a sign plastered simply with a star bisected hand and a window fully covered with dusty red drapes.

  “Right this way, ladies.” Charles pushed the door open and went inside, holding it for them to follow him. “Hallo, Marie!”

  Kerry paused inside the door and looked around, her eyes widening. “Wow.” The inside of the very small storefront was cluttered in the extreme and the ceiling was hung with what looked like bird and bat wings and bones. “Watch your head, hon.”

  “No kidding.” Dar ducked, her eyes somewhat wider and rounder than normal.

  “Hallo, Charles.” A tiny woman in a purple crinoline dress came out from a back room, wiping her lips. “Who you got here, eh?”

  Dar was immediately distracted by a skull mounted on a tall umbrella as a handle.

  “These here nice ladies stopped and passed the time of day with me over by the square. They’re interested in having their fortunes told. You busy?”

  “Oh, yes. Can’t you see all the people in here lined up waiting?” Marie chuckled. “Too many people at too many parties last night for sure.” She turned her eyes to Kerry. “Hello there.”

  “Hi.” Kerry edged closer. Marie had a relatively high table with a stool padded with worn denim behind it and two more on the other side. She glanced up at the ceiling. “Are those bird bones?”

  Marie slipped onto her stool. She had a lined and weathered face, brown tan and silver gray hair that was pulled back in a tight bun with a pair of flying monkey chopsticks holding it in place. “They’re all sorts of things,” she said. “I pick things up when I walk around, you know? It’s like they’re looking for homes, so I bring them here.”

  Kerry seated herself on one of the stools. “I pick up rocks when I walk,” she said. “They remind me of places and times. Is that the same kind of thing?”

  Dar kept her head ducked to one side as she examined the book case that lined the side of the shop. The books were varied and old, all hardback, some with barely legible titles in a number of different languages. There was a scent of dust and aging paper that wafted out from them. They were lit by a candle sconce flickering gently nearby.

  “Oh, something like that,” Marie said. “Charles, there’s some coffee in the back if you want some.”

  Charles smiled and availed himself of the offer, disappearing behind the thick bead curtain that separated the front of the shop from the area behind.

  “So what’s your name?” Marie asked.

  “Kerry.” She hooked her feet around the stool’s supports and rested her arm on one knee. “Charles said you were a fortune teller.”

  “Oh, something like,” Marie said with a brief grin. “Do you want your fortune told, Kerry? You looking for riches or gold, or a sugar daddy?”

  Behind her Dar chuckled while examining a round crystal.

  “None of the above,” Kerry said. “I’ve got everything in the world I need.”

  The old woman studied her. “Yes, you know you seem like that,” Marie said after a pause. “You’re someone who has their heart’s desire. But it was not always so.”

  Kerry felt a faint shiver. “No, that’s true. Took me a while to find what I was looking for.”

  “Took me about thirty seconds,” Dar commented from her idle browsing. “Came aroun
d the corner, stopped in the doorway, done deal.”

  “Dar.” Kerry gave her an affectionate look. “C’mere and pay attention to my fortune.”

  Dar put down the rock she was examining, walked the few steps over, seated herself on the second stool and regarded Marie benignly.

  “Marie, this is Dar,” Kerry said. “Dar isn’t into palm reading and that sort of thing. She’s humoring me.”

  Marie studied Dar, glancing briefly into Dar’s pale, intense eyes. “No, I don’t figure that,” she said with a smile. “You’re someone who makes their own future and needs no telling from me.” She wagged a finger at her. “Not often someone brings a crusader into Marie’s store, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m no crusader,” Dar said.

  “Of course you are,” Kerry said. “We were just talking about that, Dar. A creepy ghost shows up on our balcony and what happens? Do you scream?”

  Dar cleared her throat.

  Marie watched them with interest. “So you’ve seen one of our honored guests, have you? Where is that, you said on the balcony?”

  “Of our hotel. The Sonesta,” Kerry said. “I woke up last night to find my modest friend here facing off against some ghoul outside, scaring him off.” She put a hand on Dar’s leg. “I freak out about them, Dar just wants to kick their asses.”

  “That true?” Marie studied Dar “You know, the departed ain’t something you want to mess with.”

  Dar cleared her throat again. “I don’t want to mess with them. Assuming they exist. But they also don’t scare me and I’m not going to let them scare her.”

  “See, I told you, Marie.” Charles had reappeared in the doorway with a steaming cup. “That’s an old soul you got there.” He came over and took the last stool at the table. “Most times the departed don’t take much interest in the living, you know? They got other things to do. Some of them replay their ends over and over, some of them don’t realize they’re gone, so they keep trying to get done whatever they had to do when they died.”

  “That’s kind of hard for me to wrap my head around,” Kerry admitted. “I had a pretty conservative upbringing.”