The Den (12 page)

“Oh, no.  Sorry, baby.”  He kissed her gently on the lips, leaving them red with her own blood.  She was slightly cold.  Her breathing came in short hisses.  Maybe he’d drunk too much.  He liked to prolong it as much as possible, but she was so tasty.  How could he resist? 

Peter prayed for patience.  “Oh, Lord, help me.” 

He took a slow breath, and he grew calmer.  He wiped the single tear out of her eye with his free thumb.  Then he ran it along her lips and down her chin, smearing the blood that had been left from his kiss.  He ran his hand straight down, passing between her tiny breasts and on to her stomach.  He rested it there and turned his fingers downward.  He would please her.  She would like that.  He slid his hand down more so that just the fingertips touched her tender part.  Maybe he should lift her white skirt.  He pushed it up and moved his fingers back down.  He felt her shift. 
Oh, she must like this
.  It made him too excited, though.  He could feel the warm blood on the thumb that plugged his fang marks.  He couldn’t bear it.  He turned his lips back to the neck and finished it off.  He sucked as hard as he could.  He kept his hand down below for her, but he couldn’t focus.  He could only feel the bubbling blood running over his lapping tongue and down his throat.  He swallowed fast.  He couldn’t help it.  The flow slowed down.  Her heart began skipping beats.  He moved his hand up from between her legs and onto her chest.  Yes.  He could barely feel the heartbeat now.  He stopped swallowing and looked her in the eye, but she was someplace far away.  The lack of connection triggered a pang in his chest. He kissed her on the lips and held her tight.  Mara was a thoughtful and giving girl, he thought.  He made a mental note: When it was his turn to provide for Mara, he would bring an extra-special morsel home.  Maybe even two. 

Mara smiled to herself.  She couldn’t help but peek into Peter’s mind.  It made her hungry to think about what he was doing.  She stood up to grab another piece of meat.  Lucy noticed the smile and leaned over and smacked her on the behind playfully.  She didn’t like when others looked into private moments.  She could tell from Mara’s pink cheeks that she was listening too closely.  Lucy couldn’t help but take a glance into his mind either.  Peter was so gentle with his victims.

*

“Hello,” Skyla said as Brooke finally answered the phone.  “Brooke, it’s me.”

“Hi.  Hold on,” Brooke whispered.  Skyla tapped her foot as she waited for Brooke to speak again.  “I know it is you,” Brooke said.   “Rob’s in the office today.  I had to run into the bathroom.  What’s up?  How is it going?”

“Oh, Brooke, it is weird here.  Real weird.  I don’t know.  There is something going on with Alex’s sister and the others where she works.”

“The others?  Slow down.  How is Alex?”

“He is great.  I mean, everything is so great with him.  He is very … aware of things.  He says he can teach me to read minds.  What do you think about that?”

“Like what you used to do?  But you know how to do that, don’t you?”

“I can’t remember.  I don’t know how I used to do it.  Remember how I never really did it on purpose?  He says he can teach me.  The others can do it, too.  But there is some other stuff going on here.”

Skyla tried to explain about the spooky text message and the strange feelings she got when she was around James.  She had to leave out the part about thinking he had been following her in New York.  She hadn’t told Brooke about that.  She couldn’t force her words to take the shape of a conclusive story.  They wrapped around in a foolish retelling of what had been happening in the den. 

Brooke encouraged Skyla to give it more time, a couple of more days.  It couldn’t hurt anything.  After all, maybe Skyla could find out some more about herself—finally figure out who and what she was. 
Witch
suddenly seemed like an awfully broad term. 

“Besides,” Brooke pushed, “don’t you really like him?”

   Skyla admitted that she did.  She also felt so very connected to New Orleans.  It definitely seemed like the kind of place she could settle down in for a while.  It was the kind of place where she could really feel free.  Skyla had the strangest feeling that she had thought those words before. 

“Something is so familiar about this place,” Skyla said.

Just then Alex stepped out of the shower.  Skyla and Brooke said goodbye and vowed to speak in two days. 

“Let’s go,” Alex said.  “Get in the shower, and then we’ll get some breakfast.  I could show you around some more.  Maybe we will take a tour of the Ninth Ward.”  

Skyla thought that sounded just about right. 

-Fifteen-

Above-Ground Graves

Skyla and Alex walked down to Jackson Square, where the artists were setting up their tables, trying to catch a tourist or two to buy their local creations.  Alex walked over to a young guy carrying a sign that read “Tours for Donations.”  A few people congregated in his area.  They milled around, some drinking coffee and others drinking beer.  Alex arranged for a seat on the bus.  The driver jotted down something on his pad and then nodded and gave a wave to the hovering crowd.  There were ten people, including Skyla and Alex, who followed him to his small bus.  Alex and Skyla took a seat at the front.  The others filed in, snapping shots and shimmying into the scratchy seats.  The driver introduced himself using only his first name, Malachy.  He told his group he was a typical New Orleans mix.  His mother was an Irish immigrant who’d run away from her abusive stepfather.  When she arrived in New Orleans, she began working as a cocktail waitress at a bar on Bourbon Street.  She met his father, a Louisiana native with a genealogy that included runaway slaves on both sides.  His father had been working as a private bodyguard for a wealthy Louisiana oil mogul who frequented the city on Saturday nights.  Malachy’s mother and father fell in
love
that night
. 
Malachy was born later that year.  He had seven younger brothers and sisters.  He’d had nine, but two died in Katrina. 

The bus started and Skyla looked out the window.  To her left she saw the French Market.  Malachy pointed out every street and every possible point of interest.  He slowed to allow two eager travelers to snap some pictures.  He turned into a neighborhood known as the Upper Ninth Ward.  He told stories to prepare his group for what they were to see on the next leg of the tour, the Lower Ninth Ward. 

Nothing could have prepared Skyla for what she saw, though.  The houses in the run-down town of Talbotton had been mansions in comparison.  Lots consisted of dirt piles, with cinder blocks serving as headstones for the lost homes.   Malachy pointed out the numbers written on the houses that still stood.  The numbers were written by men who had been attempting to count the dead.  Then the bus turned a corner.  Skyla could see that the empty lots were everywhere.  She could imagine the wave coming through that cleaned out the area.  This block was different, though.  Between the dust lots were new houses standing proud.  Some people had decided to come back home.  Alex held his hand over his eyes, and Malachy continued his narrative.

Malachy pointed to a tree where, he claimed, he and some others had had to rescue a cow that was stuck in its branches after the storm.  He directed their attention to a fenced-in mound of rubble.  It used to be the park that his brothers and sisters played in when they were younger.

It all became too much for Skyla to bear, and she leaned into Alex and silently prayed for the missing and the dead.

They left the Lower Ninth and drove back through the Upper Ninth with new eyes.  It seemed richer now.  They passed through Treme and were told this was the area where Malachy lived now.  Malachy pulled over, and the voyeurs were instructed to use the facilities and buy some food at a brightly lighted and cheery café.  Skyla and Alex kept quiet.

Twenty minutes later, they piled into the bus, shaking off the grim images that had danced around their minds.  Skyla clasped her coffee and tried to steady her nerves.  The next stop would be the Garden District.  Skyla had strolled through this area with Alex already.  She welcomed this part of the trip.  It was a beautiful area lined with manicured homes and lawns and gardens. 

Malachy pointed out the homes that belonged to famous actors.  He pointed out where the family of professional athletes lived.  He asked them to look out the right side of the bus at the sprawling garden of a big white home that was surrounded by a stone wall.  Skyla was trying to peer over the wall when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a child sitting on top of the wall.  She jumped up from her seat and pressed her palms to the glass.  She started to scream, but her voice got caught.  Then the child was gone.  Had she fallen into the yard?   Had Skyla’s eyes been playing tricks on her?  She turned toward Malachy, who had stopped the bus for the amateur photographers.  She began to mumble about a baby.

“I think a baby …”  She stopped and covered her eyes.  She shook her head.  “No, a child just fell from that wall.  She was sitting there watching us and now I don’t see her.”

Malachy smiled and sneaked a sly look at Alex.  Alex lowered his eyes and shrugged.  “There is always someone on the tour that sees her,” Malachy said with a wink.  Then he turned and put the bus in “drive.”

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly.  They visited several cemeteries and their above-ground graves.  The sun began to set, and Skyla’s eyes played more tricks on her.  The white stone graves seemed to vibrate and speak to each other.   The tourists took shots from every angle.  Alex wondered what would come out in the pictures.  Would they catch a glimpse of images from other worlds?  He walked away from the crowd and was drawn to a stone.  He stood in front of it and cocked his head.  Why was this familiar?

Skyla came up behind him and he jumped out of his skin.  “Let’s go,” he said.  “I am getting the creeps here.”  He grabbed Skyla’s hand and steered her back toward the bus. 

Skyla looked over her shoulder and saw that etched in the stone was “Stephen Renard 1780-1813.”  She squinted and looked hard at Alex.  He kept his eyes forward.

Malachy made his second-to-last stop in the Warehouse District.  Alex shook his hand and dropped some money into the pail marked “Donations.”  Skyla and Alex walked the rest of the way.  They were passing by the Louisiana Children’s Museum when Alex tugged on Skyla’s hand. She looked at him and he smiled. 

“They’re closed now, but we should go play in the museum one of these days,” he said.

Skyla did not say anything.  Her smile faded as she considered what he’d said.

“I mean, if we stay in town long enough.  If you stay with me, here,” Alex quickly corrected himself.

Skyla smiled back and got up on her toes so she could kiss him.  He leaned down and put his arms around her.  When they were finished kissing, Alex held her close.  He whispered in her ear that he was glad they were here together.  They started walking again.  They followed South Peters Street until it became North Peters Street.  Then they were home. 

They were silent as they strolled through the waking streets of the French Quarter.  It was dark now.

*

Brooke had been lonely since Skyla left.  She hated going home to the apartment at night.  She’d started working extra-late, staying until 9 p.m. most days.  That’s when she started spending more time alone with Rob.  He had been her boss for three months now.  He’d taken her out to celebrate the occasion two nights ago.  It seemed that everyone had noticed when the two walked in together the next morning.  Last night she’d argued that she had to go home to her own place.  Tonight she’d found herself back in the same situation.  This time they sat at a sushi restaurant.  This is how it had started last time—food and then too much drinking.   Tonight there was endless sake at dinner, and there would be too much vodka at the bar next door during after-dinner drinking and flirting.  Two nights ago she’d told herself it had been celebratory.  However, it seemed she was in the same predicament now.  How could she refuse him?  It was impossible to grasp a clear perspective.  She hadn’t gotten to this part of the conversation with Skyla.  The last time they’d spoken, they agreed that this should not even come close to happening.  What would Skyla say now?  Probably that screwing your boss was a bad move.  It was too late now.  He was awfully charming.  She loved the way his dark hair flopped into his eyes by the end of the day, abused by a worrisome hand that gripped and pulled at it throughout the hours of work.  She loved that his tie hung loose around his neck, still neat but pushed aside so that the top button of his shirt could be loosened. 

Rob leaned across the intimate-sized table, pointed a chopstick at her, and said, “That was fun the other night.  I was thinking about it all day long.  You might be bad for business.  I can’t keep my head in my work.” 

“I was rather hoping to be an asset for the company,” she answered, trying to keep the banter light.  Things were getting out of her control.  Brooke was in the habit of keeping all aspects of her life in order, and this was not in the plan. 

He smiled and popped a spicy tuna roll into his mouth.  He knew that she would be going home with him tonight.  She knew it, too.  That’s why she’d put a toothbrush and a change of underwear in her laptop bag before she left her apartment that morning.  She finished her drink, and he poured her another glass.  His eyes were dangerously beautiful.

She leaned closer, signaling him to do the same.  Whispering, she let him in on her most intimate secret.  “I don’t fall in love, and one way or the other I always end up on top.”

He understood the double-entendre.  He made a mental note to send her out for coffee first thing in the morning. 

*

Mara paced behind the bar.  It was her turn to watch the place.  The others had just left, gone out to find some fun.  It had been about thirty-four hours since she last slept.  She had tossed and turned all day yesterday and hadn’t slept a wink.   Where was Steve?  He should be home tonight.  He’d promised he would be back.  It was nearly 10 now.  He would put Alex in his place.