by Sahara Kelly
“I love the bayou. Grew up here. Don’t like stuff folks do to it. Take those levées. You stop the river from floodin’, you’re gonna lose all the alluvial deposits that enrich this part of the state…”
Honey moved to his side and ran her hand up his arm. “Talkin’ like that, you’re turning me on.”
Louis struggled not to point out that simply saying “hello” to Honey was probably enough to turn her on. Cory’s nails digging into his arm helped. He didn’t need to be a psychic to know they were thinking the same damn thing.
He grinned down at her. “So what do you think? You feeling anything about this particular spot?”
She smiled back. “Thanks for asking that. You trust me now, don’t you?”
“Always have, sweetheart.” His hand slipped lower, their fingers interlacing. “You’ve never proved yourself wrong yet. I’m on board with this, whatever it is, wherever it leads. Love Alley may be in my name, but it’s from your family.”
Her gaze lingered on his face, happiness in her eyes. “Thanks, Louis.”
“Hey—over here.” Maurice beckoned. “I remember this tree…”
He led them down a shaded path, over massive gnarled roots and through a few muddy spots that made Honey shudder and pick her way carefully.
Mindful of the local residents, Louis picked his own path carefully too, cursing the television specials he’d watched that featured things like cottonmouth snakes and other assorted creepy crawlies.
None of which he wanted to accidentally tread on when he was this far from civilization.
Finally, Maurice stopped. “Here. It was here.”
Ahead of them, Louis saw a small clearing and he blinked. Nothing grew there, no wild grasses or rambling weeds. The trees surrounding it were tall, shading most of it from the harsh rays of the midday sun.
“These trees used to be where those orchids grew. Not many of ‘em, but I remember my grandpa tellin’ me never ever to touch ‘em.” He sighed. “They’re gone now. Too bad.”
It was quiet, quieter here than in other places they’d walked through. The birds still sang and the mosquitoes buzzed, but it was sort of like a hush had fallen over this particular little spot. In spite of the heat and the humidity, Louis shivered.
Cory had stilled beside him and he sensed her emotions. “Cory?”
The others turned to look at her. “She okay?” Maurice raised an eyebrow.
“Dunno.” Louis waited patiently.
“This is the place.” Cory sighed the words and the air around them seemed to shudder slightly.
“All right…” Louis glanced around. After some of his experiences he had no clue what to expect next.
“I have to go in there.” She released his hand.
“You sure?”
Her eyes were distant, that oddly unfocused expression that he was rapidly becoming familiar with. “Yes, Louis. I’m sure.” She grasped the little necklace firmly in her palm and stepped forward.
Honey and Maurice made to follow her, but Louis’s hand held them back. This was Lavalieres business and needed the hand of a Lavalle to finish it.
Somehow he knew that the only person who could take the final steps in this journey—which had lasted over two hundred years—was Cory.
And Cory alone.
*~~*~~*
The silver pendant warmed in her grasp as Cory stepped into the clearing. All around her, the shadowed bayou foliage rustled softly, barely moving in the heat of the day. Familiar sounds—the lapping of murky water, the chirping of an assortment of insects, the occasional hoot of a wading bird—echoed around her ears but made no impression.
She was watching the ground, sensing that which was there—but not there. Invisible waves of energy guided her steps, leading her to the very center and a tiny patch of moss glowing green in a ray of sunlight.
She bent down and reverently placed the pendant on top of it.
Within seconds a mist appeared around her feet, insubstantial at first then thicker, fuller, whirling into eddies and currents that had no relationship to the air in the rest of the clearing.
Cory moved backwards a pace or two, uncertain of her next move.
“Bonjour, chère.”
This time the voice was real, as real as the mosquito biting her arm. She swatted the insect and stared at the mist as it strengthened into forms—two forms—human forms.
“Greetings, lil’ one.”
Eyes wide, she watched two bodies appear, arms intertwined, heads close to each other. “Oh my God…” She recognized them immediately, in spite of their vaporous appearance.
The first one. “Claudine.” And the other. “Baptiste.”
Claudine smiled. “Yes, chère. Together at last thanks to you.”
Cory blinked as she realized the pendant had disappeared. “I don’t understand any of this. Never have.”
Claudine chuckled and snuggled into Baptiste’s arms. “You know most of it. I died one terrible night. Killed by a savage man’s hand, mourned by so many. It was a sad time at Love Alley.”
Baptiste dropped a kiss on her head. “It was indeed, mon amour.” He looked at Cory. “Part of all of us died that night. She took my heart and my love to her grave with her.” He nodded down at the ground. “I laid her here to rest.”
“Here? This is your grave?” Cory asked Claudine the question.
Claudine tilted her head. “And it should’ve been Baptiste’s too. We discovered this spot. We came here to be alone—and to love. Ahh, we loved here so freely, chère. Giving all we had to each other surrounded only by my lovely bayou. It was a chance to leave all that behind, d’you see?”
Cory nodded. “Yeah. I can understand that, for sure.” She remembered the noise and the music she’d seen in the past. Love Alley must have indeed been crammed full of people, no place for a truly private tryst between lovers. “So what happened?”
Claudine sighed. “My wonderful Baptiste saved my soul, Cory Lavalle. He was going to take it with him on his journey.” Her eyes turned sad. “You must know how things were then. One like Baptiste—well, for him life was not easy.” She pulled his arm tighter around her. “And our son Etienne. Had anyone known of him—it would have not ended well for either of them. Hatred roamed these bayous as easily as the ‘gators, Cory.”
Cory bit her lip. “Some places it still does, Claudine.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. When there was such love here too.” She shrugged. “Baptiste made me a promise that night before I passed. He fulfilled that promise. No revenge, just freedom for him and my son.” She looked somber. “It was hard, but he kept that promise as I knew he would. My killer met his end soon enough.”
Baptiste nodded. “He was a drunkard as well as a foul fiend of a man. Drinking does not mix with walking in the bayou.”
“He fell in?” Cory’s eyes opened wide.
Baptiste nodded again. “His death did not come from my hands or anybody else at Love Alley, but from his own stupidity and arrogance. Alligators—they do not care about money or influence, just their next meal.”
Claudine sighed. “A fitting end for one such as he. But the damage was done to Love Alley.”
Baptiste took up the story. “I couldn’t get away as soon as I’d wanted. With Claudine gone, the house fell into chaos. Customers were everywhere, taking what they desired, many of them becoming the animals they were at heart.” His lip curled in disgust. “I knew I had to flee—and quickly. I had concealed Claudine’s necklace in a secret hiding place. If it was found on one like me, I’d be accused of stealing and shot immediately, without question. I’d planned on retrieving it just before we left.”
A deep sigh made Cory’s heart ache. “But something happened…”
“Yes. Many men came. There was noise, shouting, screaming…” He shook away the memory. “I had to get to Etienne—there was no time for anything else. I had to make a choice. I chose him.”
“You chose correctly, my heart.” Claudine turned h
er head on his shoulder and gazed at him. “Etienne was our love made real. You did the right thing.”
Respectfully Cory gave them a moment before butting in with the first question that popped into her mind. “But…I still don’t understand. What’s with the necklace?”
Baptiste smiled. “It is Claudine’s soul, lil’ one. By finding it and bringing it here, you have freed her soul to join mine.”
“Huh?”
His dark face glowed with joy. “She is with me again now, as it was meant. We are together for all eternity thanks to you.”
“At the risk of repeating myself…huh?”
Claudine laughed, a lilting sound that warmed Cory’s heart. “My Baptiste is an amazing man, chère, and not just in bed either.” She nudged him. “Although I have to admit that there he is as a god.”
“Only with you, my heart.” Baptiste nuzzled her head.
“Excuse me.” Loath to interrupt the moment, Cory still needed answers. “You were saying about the necklace?”
He looked up at her and smiled. “I had some powers of my own, lil’ one. I wanted Claudine by my side for eternity. I made sure it would happen by placing her soul into the necklace.”
“Ahh.” Questions trembled on her lips, but for once they stayed there. Perhaps there were some things she was not meant to know.
“We needed to be reunited. And we needed the right person to accomplish that task.”
Claudine took up the tale. “I waited. I waited alone, knowing that soon someone would come to my house and do what was needed.” She sighed. “It was a long wait.”
“And then I came along…or rather Louis did…”
“You had the sight. You are a Lavalieres by blood. And you loved.” She smiled, a warm look that made her emerald eyes glow.
“It had to be the strongest love, chère.” Baptiste nodded. “A passion to rival ours that would shake this house, dislodge its secrets and lead you here to this place.”
Cory pursed her lips as she remembered exactly how they’d found the portrait and the necklace. And what she and Louis had been doing at the time. “Ah.” What else could she say?
“Others stayed with me now and again.” Claudine chuckled. “My girls. My friends. They visited, watched—waited with me. It helped.”
“And then we arrived—”
“And everything was in place to finish the matter. To bring Claudine back to my arms forever.” Baptiste nodded. “Thank you, Cory Lavalle. It has been a long lonely wait, but now it’s over.”
“I still don’t understand how—”
There was a sound behind the misty figures that attracted both their attention and Cory’s. Another figure was materializing.
“We must go now, Cory. We are tired. We need to rest. Together.” Claudine reached toward Cory. “Thank you, sweet child. From the bottom of our hearts. Thank you.”
Cory reached out in her turn, only to see the mist begin to dissolve. “No, wait…”
“Merci, chère. Merci…”
The figures were gone, leaving Cory in the clearing facing someone or something that had stood behind them. She blinked. “Zulee?”
No longer a wizened old woman in a wild outfit, this was a tall and magnificent creature, skin glowing from within, eyes bright as the sun. Cory tried to focus on her, but it was like trying to stare at a light. She couldn’t quite grasp any details.
Except a strong wave of power, the likes of which made her want to fall to her knees. “Who are you?”
“I have many names.” Her voice chimed through the clearing, pure and musical, like a bell on a distant hill tolling the hours. “You know me as Zulee. They knew me as Maitresse Erzulie.”
Cory gasped at the words. She knew that name, for sure. The most powerful Voodoo goddess of all. “I…I…” Oh shit. What had she said to Zulee? Had she pissed off a supreme being by mistake?
The apparition smiled. “You have done well, Cory Lavalle. I’ve been waiting as well, keeping an eye on this place. Hoping that soon someone would come and settle the unfinished business that kept me here.” She stretched and yawned, an oddly human gesture for a goddess. “It’s been a helluva long wait too. Interesting at times, but mostly boring.”
“Goddesses get bored?” Who knew?
Erzulie ignored the question. “Once that man arrived and finally followed my instructions to call you, I knew my wait was at an end. You two were clearly destined to end up in bed together.”
“Did you fix it so we would?” Cory lifted an eyebrow.
Erzulie laughed. “Chère, I’m good—I’m not that good. I cannot command love or passion where there is none. You both did that on your own. And oh my, how you did that—”
Cory blushed. “Okay. Never mind that. So how—”
“Too many questions for which I have too few answers. Once there was real magic, Cory. There were people who believed that the impossible could become possible. A knowledge that floated on the bayou amongst its people the way trash floats on the bayou today. Once there were flowers, orchids even. Baptiste grew them just for Claudine. Now—poof. Endangered species.” She sighed. “Too many changes now. Too much has been lost.”
She pulsed with a strange light. “Sometimes I am sad at the end of the old ways. Other times I laugh to see the wonders that exist today.” Her gaze caught Cory’s and held it. “And always I rejoice when passion rises between lovers. When that heat devours them and turns them from rigid paths of technological torture and back into the old ways of bodies folding together in just the right pieces of a pattern. A simple wonder that has never changed—and I pray never will.”
She began to float upwards, shimmering and gleaming brilliantly against the dappled shade of the bayou behind her. “The house is quiet now, Cory Lavalle. Its tenants will be able to sleep thanks to you and your lover. It has been a job well done and the end of the road has come upon us all.”
Cory swallowed. “I want to know so much more—”
Erzulie smiled. “There is only one thing you need know. That man of yours is a good man, a sound man and he’ll treat you well. He will love you and you will love him. ‘Tis a gift you both give each other, child. Accept it, cherish it. Do with it what you will, but never doubt it.”
“And you?”
“I intend to sleep for a while now. Do not forget me, Cory. I shall not forget you. You will not see me again, but perhaps I shall visit in a dream someday—”
She began to fade.
“I hope so.” Cory meant it. So many questions still remained unanswered, but she knew in her heart that it would always be so. Mysteries would always be out there—the fun was in working them through, not being given a cheat sheet to life.
“Thank you, Maitresse…”
“Go to your man, child. Fuck his brains out. Laissez les bon temps roulées…” She vanished with a throaty chuckle and Cory turned, leaving the clearing as she’d found it—empty and quiet.
The others were waiting silently, watching her as she walked back toward them. Louis held out his hand to her without a word. She took it, finding warmth and comfort in his touch.
“So? What the hell happened?” Honey couldn’t hold the question back.
“Did you—see anything?” Cory’s throat felt dry and she cleared it with a little cough.
“Just some fog or mist stuff, babe.” Louis’s arm snaked around her waist. “What did happen?”
Cory looked at them, faces eager, a need to share in the end of the adventure written clearly across them all. “Let’s go back to Love Alley. Boy, do I have a story to tell you.”
*~~*~~*
“So that is pretty much that.” It was late now, the hours having passed quickly as the tale of Love Alley and its residents of so long ago had unfolded. The sun was setting, the cicadas buzzing, and it was a surprisingly ordinary setting for a ghost story.
Louis watched Cory as she finished her tale and leaned back in her chair. They were sitting around his kitchen table once more, in various stag
es of disbelief.
“I don’t believe a word of it.” Honey snorted. “Ghosts? Spirits? A love long dead? C’mon. It’s the twenty-first century, for Chrissake. Things like that only happen in the movies.”
Louis glared at her. “Oh really?” He paused. “Alice?”
Honey’s jaw dropped. “How—wha—” She turned accusing eyes on Maurice. “Did you—”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “You may be from New Jersey, but I reckon you got Louisiana blood in you someplace, woman.”
Cory raised an eyebrow at Louis and mouthed the words, “New Jersey?”
He shrugged back. He had no clue how to figure any of this out, but he believed every word Cory had told them. He’d seen too much to dismiss any of it at this point.
Honey was still sputtering with confusion and Maurice took pity on her. “Time to go.” He grabbed her arm and tugged her from her chair. “We got business, Alice.”
She opened her mouth to protest but shut it again as he stared at her. “Uh, yeah. We got business.”
Louis and Cory stood too. “Okay. I guess we’ll get back to work tomorrow, Maurice.”
The man nodded as he led an unresisting Honey from the kitchen. “Yep. Tomorrow.”
As one, the remaining couple moved to the window and watched them walk down the grassy expanse.
“Doesn’t say much, does he?” Cory chuckled.
Louis watched Maurice reach down and firmly grab Honey’s round ass. “Doesn’t need to.”
Honey’s hand followed suit, grabbing Maurice by the buttocks. Thus linked, they disappeared from view. Cory’s chuckle turned into a laugh. “Guess not.” She began to clear up the empty soda cans from the table.
Louis stayed at the window and sighed.
“What?” Cory moved behind him, leaning against his back, all softness and curves where her breasts brushed against his spine.
“I was just thinking…” He stared outside. “The house. It’s empty now. Quiet. The ghosts are all gone, haven’t they?”
“Yep.” She put her arms around him.
Louis sighed again. “It’s kind of a shame. I’m happy everything turned out the way it did, but damn, I’m sure gonna miss those twins…”