Authors: Heather Hamilton-Senter
“Hey, I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I?” That was directed at Ava in a soft drawl, but he was looking at me.
“Probably, I come here all the time with my friends. You’re a local?”
That was enough of an invitation for him to sit down in one of the empty seats. “Local enough—grew up just outside of Baton Rouge. I’m Ethan, by the way.”
“Ava—Vermont. Lacey—Canada. We’re seniors at Westover.” Ava gestured languidly between us.
“Cold weather gals then.”
“The coldest,” Ava replied, but her laugh was husky.
Up close, Ethan didn’t look as much like Peter as I’d originally thought. He was shorter and his hair was more bronze than gold. As he continued to banter with Ava, I tuned them out and focused on the closest TV screen.
“It’s a cryin’ shame. They should string up whoever did that. As if it weren’t bad enough all the damage Katrina did to this city.”
The silence alerted me to the fact that Ethan’s comment was addressed to me. I widened my eyes as I turned my attention to him.
“Pardon?”
“The tomb—that’s what you were looking at, right?”
I was saved by Ava. “What tomb?”
“Marie Laveau’s tomb! Look, they’re still talking about it.”
The TV was on mute, but closed captioning ran across the bottom of the screen. It was a news report on the vandalism of the tomb of the notorious Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, Marie Laveau. An image of the above ground structure filled the screen. Someone had painted it bright pink.
The waitress brought our food and Ava and Ethan kept up a conversation that I knew I participated in from the look on Ethan’s face when I spoke, but couldn’t for the life of me recall. There was something about the story of the vandalism of the tomb that had both intrigued and unsettled me, so when we finished eating and Ethan suggested taking a walk over to have a look, I agreed.
There was a bit of a bite in the air when we stepped out into the street, but it was nothing compared to what I was used to this time of year, so it was easy to ignore. “How far is it?” I asked.
“Only ten minutes or so.”
Ava was already striding down the street. “C’mon! I’ve been in New Orleans for three whole years and I’ve never once been to the grave of a Voodoo queen. It’s practically criminal!”
Ethan was right; it was an easy walk. The crowd thinned when we entered a rougher, less tourist-friendly neighborhood. But when we arrived at the gate of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, it was locked up tight.
Ava pouted. “Well that was a waste of time.”
Ethan flashed a smile. “Don’t despair, darlin’. I happen to know another way in.” He looked even less like Peter when he smiled. The tattoo on my arm suddenly became warm.
As he disappeared around the corner, I hesitated. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
Ava grinned and threw her arms around my shoulder, nearly knocking the breath out of my lungs as her heavy bag thumped against my back.
“McInnis, you need to live a little. Nothing bad’s going to happen.” She jerked her chin toward the road. “There’s even a police station just over there. You said you were a wild child back home. Don’t wuss out on me now.”
She was right. I’d seen much worse than a spooky old cemetery. As long as the dead stayed dead—and without magic intervention they usually did—there was nothing to fear here.
I felt myself grin—a real, honest smile that had no ulterior motive. “OK.” We turned the corner onto what the sign indicated was Conti St. This street was darker and more secluded. The houses on the other side looked abandoned and had plastic taped over all the windows and doors. Here the white-washed wall that enclosed the cemetery revealed its true face of scarred and broken brick. One section was about three feet shorter than the rest.
Ethan was fitting his foot into a part of the wall where the first layer of brick had broken away. With one hop, he pulled himself on to the wide top. As he looked down at us, I wondered how I’d ever thought he looked anything like Peter. His hair and eyes were much darker and there was something heavy about the contours of his face. He was older than I thought he was. Hadn’t he told us he was a college student? Or had I just assumed that?
Ava grabbed Ethan’s hand and hauled herself up. With a flash of her exquisite smile, she slid down the sloping roof of the tomb on the other side and disappeared from sight.
CHAPTER THREE
The mark on my arm was still warm, but I wasn’t aware of exerting any of my inherent magical charm. Even as I brushed my fingers against it, the warmth disappeared. My skin felt smooth, and I knew that this last spell and its accompanying mark had almost disappeared.
I took Ethan’s outstretched hand and shivered; it was cold from contact with the air-chilled brick. He pulled me up easily, but since I was so much shorter, he dropped to the ground first and grabbed me around the waist to lift me down. It was a strangely old-fashioned gesture you might imagine of a man lifting a young lady down from her carriage.
The moon was only a crescent, but the night was clear, and the streetlights surrounding the cemetery gave enough light to see by. Ava was already wandering down one of the laneways. White burial vaults lined every side like little houses on a city street.
Ava paused at a newer, pyramid structure. “I heard some actor built that for when he croaks.” She turned around. “Why is everything above ground?”
Ethan ran his hand over the crumbling plaster covering one particularly ancient specimen. “The cemetery dates back to the late 1700s when New Orleans was part French and part Spanish. The tombs reflect their tradition. And it’s the high water table too. You can’t have corpses rising to the surface every time it rains.” He lifted his arms dramatically. “It’s a city of the dead.” Dropping his arms, he grinned and gestured for us to follow. “C’mon, the Voodoo queen’s tomb is this way.”
Ava’s expression was bright with interest. “How come you know so much about this place?”
Ethan shrugged. “I’ve been here a few times, tagged along on a couple of tours.”
We turned right and Marie Laveau’s tomb was unmistakable in bubblegum pink paint. A simple, rectangular structure with a peaked roof and a white inset like a front door, it was surrounded by flowers, jewelry, and even food strewn on the ground.
Ava whistled. “The pictures didn’t do it justice. It’s not just pink—it’s
pink
. Why would anyone do something like this?”
I didn’t answer, but I knew. I could feel it. One, two, three—I counted in my mind. Even though the paint was fresh, a few new X’s in sets of three were scratched into the surface. When I brushed my fingers against them, I felt the scores of others buried beneath the paint. They should have hummed with power, but the desecration of pink had broken them.
Ethan tapped one of the new marks. “A rumor began back in the Thirties that if you make three X’s on the tomb and then turn around three times and speak your wish, Marie Laveau will grant it.”
One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two three. I forced myself to speak, trying to break the compulsion to make my own marks on the tomb. “Is that Voodoo?”
Ethan sniggered and something about the sound annoyed me enough to stop the counting loop in my mind. “No, just a local legend.”
But I could feel that while this explained some of the more recent marks, the oldest had been made with a purpose.
Grabbing my wrist, Ethan tugged me around to the right side of the structure. “Come see this.” I glanced at Ava, but she was kneeling and squinting at a small plaque on the tomb.
The reflected light of a streetlamp shone directly on the wall of the structure. With his free hand, Ethan pointed to a patch where the plaster was gone and brick showed through. He pushed on the exposed brick with his finger and a piece of it shifted.
When he smiled, he looked nothing at all like Peter. “You see, chère, I wasn’t exactly telling the whole truth. I actually spend a lot of time here. There’s always a tourist who’s wandered off or some kid sneaking in after dark on a dare. Easy pickings. I found the paint in the garage of a house down the street; it must have come from a little girl’s bedroom. The color didn’t matter. I just had to break the binding spells protecting the tomb.”
“Why?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “I don’t know why actually. It’s what the creature asked me to do. I never saw it clearly; it hid in the shadows.” He laughed and his accent deepened. “I didn’t care neither. The creature promised to protect me if I did what it asked.” He tapped the brick lightly and it moved again. “When I came back the next day, do you know what I found?”
Prolonged contact was proof that Ethan’s hand wasn’t just cold from the night air; it was a band of ice around my wrist. He leaned in close and his breath was sour against my face. “Or to be exact, what I didn’t find.”
Placing his hand flat against the bricks, he gave a push and several fell into the tomb, leaving an opening just big enough to put your upper body through. A foul smell emanated from it, but I wouldn’t give Ethan the satisfaction of seeing me gag.
He looked disappointed. “Don’t you get it? All the bones were missing—poor Marie Laveau and how many others of her kin she was mingled with—but their loss was my gain. I’ve got a nice little hidey-hole for my special friends when I’m done with them.” He smiled and his teeth were white and sharp in the pale light of the crescent moon. “After all, what good is a tomb if it’s empty?”
“Ava . . . ,” I moaned, sure that if I screamed, Ethan would pounce.
He ignored my cry. “The creature told me to keep an eye on that fancy school of yours—said I was to watch for a little blonde chit like you. It was just my luck when you two snuck out through the fence.”
I inched away as far as I could until my arm was extended straight. Searching desperately for any remaining magic, I played for time. “The creature must want me for something. You’ll make it angry if you hurt me.”
His glamour was all gone now. I could see clearly his full cheeks, olive skin, and thick, red lips. His hair was so black and glossy that it was almost blue, and the tips of his sharp canines touched his bottom lip. “Maybe. But promises are promises. Blood is blood. Besides, ‘a bird in the hand’ and all that.”
“Step away, you grey-souled bastard,” a British-accented voice commanded.
When Ethan’s grip loosened in surprise, I wrenched my arm away and ran to Ava. She stood and swore softly. “Damn. Security.”
But the man and young girl approaching us weren’t security guards. The man was tall and slender, with a shock of red hair, high cheekbones, and delicate, foxy features. The girl trailing behind him could only be twelve or thirteen at most. She had a pale, oval face and tattered blonde hair falling to her waist from under a black newsboy cap.
The girl folded her arms and sighed. “Don’t bother, Bel. We’re too late anyway. They’re gone.”
Ethan slunk in front of me like an animal guarding its kill. “These are my hunting grounds! Get out!”
The man looked at the girl and she shrugged. When he looked back, a small smile flitted across his lips. Extending his arm, he flicked his index finger at Ethan.
The young man who’d lured us to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 to kill us and stuff our bodies into an empty tomb, burst into flames. He made no sound as he flared once and then disintegrated into ash, leaving nothing but charred bits of skin and a few sparks among the offerings to Marie Laveau.
Someone started screaming. It had to be Ava, because I hadn’t even cried when I saw my brother’s white face and the plastic T-rex clutched in his little, rigid hand.
Even over the screaming, I could hear the man comment drily, “I do hate vampires. They burn too quick.” He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Be a good girl and shut up, won’t you?”
The screaming stopped, filling me with surprise. It
was
me, after all. It gave me a strange feeling of hope that I could still feel something after everything I’d seen and done.
But standing in the ashy remains of a serial killing vampire, I could also feel the pull of the world of magic—a world where I’d been on track to becoming a monster. A different kind of monster than Ethan, maybe, but still a monster. “No,” I whispered, clinging to the thought of salvation.
“No?” Bel replied, misunderstanding what I was denying. “You do realize your young man was planning to drain the blood from your nubile bodies and hide them inside that tomb?”
“An
empty
tomb,” the girl at his side reminded him.
He made an impatient gesture. “Yes, empty. I caught that the first time. I’m not deaf, you know.”
The girl shrugged. “I told you it would be. We should have gone to the head of the New Orleans coven as soon as we got here.”
The man smiled. “But then we wouldn’t have found these two pretties.” The girl rolled her eyes but didn’t respond.
I glanced at Ava. She was silent, staring, and her normally golden skin was ashy. She was in shock.
The man approached us languidly with one hand in his pocket, like a model on a runway rather than a decaying cemetery. Heat poured off him and a line of sweat sprang up across my shoulders and trickled down my back. When he lifted my chin with his finger, his touch burned, but there was something else beneath it—a pleasure that was both repellent and attractive. I jerked away. He was like the city, golden and corrupt, and the stinking tomb behind me was a reminder that both were equally dangerous.
“Bel,” the girl murmured, her tone neutral and her face expressionless, but the man backed away.
I felt the disturbance in the air rather than saw the blow. When my mind could comprehend what I was looking at, I realized the man was on the ground. Ava stood over him with her bag dangling from one hand; she’d knocked him out cold with a powerful backhand.
The blonde girl walked over and gave the man a nudge on the shoulder with her foot. He didn’t move. “Wow.” I couldn’t be sure, but she sounded amused.
The girl looked at me, but now that Ava had broken from her near-catatonic state, she was running and screaming my name for me to follow.
The girl’s eyes widened slightly, pale eyebrows lifting. “Lacey McInnis?”
I hesitated, wanting to demand how she knew my name, but Ava had already disappeared from sight. I had no hope of getting up the side of that tomb and over the wall without Ava’s greater height to help.
Even though the girl looked like she was about to say more, I couldn’t wait around to hear it. Turning, I careened wildly through the city of the dead.