by G A Chase
She focused fully on him, letting her awareness merge with his. Myles, the rational, strong adult, stood guard over the scared and misunderstood boy he’d never quite outgrown. The journey into the vast reservoir of human consciousness, which he used to wade into like stepping into a cold lake on a hot day, more closely resembled a child’s first experience at the top of a log-flume ride. She could feel his apprehension building, but his steely inner command quieted his thoughts and focused them both on the guitar.
In her other hand, she held the golden guitar pick. The trip into the instrument’s past would be up to Myles, but if they ran into any unexpected demon, she wanted to be prepared. He’d risked enough for her curiosity, and though she’d saved him from the baron, she wasn’t blameless—even if he didn’t hold her responsible.
Suddenly, faces, street corners, and countless dollar bills spun past her as though she was in the center of a demented musical-performance tornado. When the chaos settled, she stood on a dry, dusty road cutting through a parched field of dying grass. Though Myles was a part of her awareness, he remained in the background like a child watching from his room at the end of a hallway.
A man younger than she’d expected sat on a flat rock in the parched landscape. His torn and dirty clothes matched the countryside in color and deprivation.
A lump formed in her throat. How am I supposed to talk to a legend? “Are you Robert Johnson?”
The man looked up with a start. Though his body had the thin athleticism of youth, his dark, sorrowful eyes reminded her of the pictures she’d seen of the sage bluesman. “Where’d you come from?”
She looked around the empty plain. Even if she could have walked that far, dust would have been kicked up from her shoes into the still air, betraying her approach.
“I suppose I’m a ghost,” she said.
He nodded as if what she’d said sounded perfectly plausible. “If you’ve come to take my life, you’re welcome to it.”
“What if I were to tell you your future isn’t as bleak as your past?”
He turned his guitar back and forth against the dirt.
So that’s where those scratches on the bottom came from.
“All I care about is playing, and not even my friends will let me on stage anymore. What good is a musician if he drives people away? A man’s work is only relevant if others appreciate it.”
She’d experienced that same self-pity a time or two, but seeing it in another, she vowed to never again succumb to its influence. “Find another emotion—one the audience will respond to. Stop acting like you’re the only one in the room. No one cares about another’s melancholy. They care about their own.”
He stopped playing with his guitar and gave her a good, long stare. “What would you know about it?”
“I’ve played a gig or two. You’re out of sync with your listeners. You act like they owe you their attention. Who are you to preach to them?”
He turned back to his guitar. “I just want to be remembered as playing with heart.”
“You have it in you, but stop thinking it’s in you alone. Find your emotional connection to other people. You’re a bluesman. Give your soul to every performance.”
“And in exchange for my soul, you’ll give me musical immortality?”
The dry landscape seemed to have infected her throat. All she’d meant to do was have a conversation and maybe help him out of a bind. The last thing she wanted was to end up playing the role of the legend’s devil.
“I’m just a fellow musician trying to give you some hope,” she said.
He pointed at Cheesecake, the protector wolf at her side. “The original trickster with her hellhound. I’m not so easily fooled by the cover of a pretty woman. Though I suppose I’ve got nothing left to lose. Teach me how to play such that people will listen.”
How am I supposed to respond? “I’m not the devil. I’m from the future”? How would that affect his playing? Cheesecake the hellhound sat at attention. So many songs had been written about that very encounter. Who am I to change musical history?
“Let your being meld with humanity,” she said. “Don’t just play using your emotions. Tap into that reservoir of hurt and longing, and realize we all drink from the same source. Don’t focus on your playing but on your existence.”
For an hour, they discussed the finer points of connecting to an audience and the power that resonated from the live encounter versus the sterile environment of a recording studio. Being on the other side of life, she could share what little she actually knew of tapping into humanity’s subconscious even when separated from people.
She could feel the connection to the unknown weakening. Like a vampire who didn’t know when to stop sucking the lifeblood from a victim, she’d held Myles in his psychometric trance for too long. The young black guitarist began picking “Crossroads” on his weathered instrument. It wasn’t quite the song she remembered, but he was well on his way.
Even Cheesecake looked drained as the three of them came back to full consciousness on her bed. Though the old girl enjoyed her naps in the sun, Kendell could tell the difference between normally lazy and spiritually exhausted.
Myles struggled to sit up. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
She shivered in a cold sweat. “Was that Guinee or the deep waters? Have I become a version of the devil?”
Myles petted Cheesecake’s shaggy coat as she looked up at Kendell with her kind, loving eyes. “Time only makes sense to the living. Recorded events left in physical objects like this guitar happen when an intense emotional experience infects the molecules. Because Robert Johnson was a young man, I’d tend to believe it was more a recording than an actual conversation.”
“It felt so real.”
He set the guitar on the floor. “When I’m experiencing an object’s history, I often end up feeling what the main character was going through. I don’t often play the role of the antagonist, but I suspect that’s what happened to you.”
“But the words were my own. I believed everything I said about connecting to an audience and giving my soul to a performance. If that was also the devil’s argument to Robert, doesn’t that make us the same?”
“When it comes to what’s truly good and what’s evil, I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”
The guitar pick in her hand radiated warmth throughout her body.
48
As Lincoln walked down Bourbon Street, he did his best to avoid the plastic cups and alcohol-soaked strings of beads littering the sidewalk. The potholed street wasn’t much better, but he only had to walk around the cars, whose drivers had ill-advisedly gotten stuck in the traffic jam that never eased. Though the occupants of the stationary vehicles might not be any soberer than the weaving pedestrians, at least they weren’t able to swerve into him.
He wasn’t a fan of visiting the French Quarter. Not only were his uncle and mother’s mausoleum-like establishments there, but the streets were filled with tourists and lined with garish buildings that looked ready to fall down. Business meetings were better conducted in comfort, where a lackey could fetch the participants whatever they desired, not in some smoke-filled bar or, worse, an opponent’s home turf. He hoped the show of contrition would soften Delphine up to his request.
I friggin’ should have had my driver bring me. He knew, though, that would have turned the fifteen-minute walk into an hour of people gawking in the darkened windows of his town car.
He turned off Bourbon Street toward the quieter residential section of the Quarter. Only the peeling paint on the building looked to have changed in the thirty years since his last visit to Scratch and Sniff perfumery. Five in the afternoon was still a little early for a shop that specialized in fragrances mild enough to be used under a stripper’s G-string, but Lincoln’s time was too valuable to wait. He hammered on the weather-beaten wall.
Delphine opened the door. Her tired look of exasperation lasted only for a moment. “What are you doing here?”
&n
bsp; “I was not just in the neighborhood. I came to see if you’ve made any progress on the Marie Laveau journals I gave you.”
She pulled her Haitian wrap tight around herself and stood aside so he could enter. “I didn’t realize a translation was part of the agreement. I gave you your ancestor trapped in the totem, and in exchange I got my ancestor’s writings.”
Lincoln’s eyes watered and nose burned at the smells of too many conflicting perfumes. “Our history goes further back than one business transaction. You know what I want.”
She motioned for him to sit at her worktable while she took the grand African-motif throne. “I can’t tell you how to control the baron’s spirit. I wouldn’t even if I could. The diaries are filled with the incantations Marie used, along with the terms of the arrangements. If she’d anticipated the baron being enticed out of Guinee and trapped in a totem, she didn’t write about it.”
He’d figured as much, just as he knew claiming ignorance would be Delphine’s opening gambit. “I’ve read what little I could of the diaries. She mentioned a curse guardian, and I think we’ve both met her.”
Delphine pulled one of the journals from the bookshelf behind her. “You think she meant the swamp witch?”
“It would explain why that old woman took such an interest in me. I’m betting you know where to find her.”
She ran her long, elegant fingers over the leather binding. “Marie was careful to keep her guardians well hidden. Some aren’t even among the living. Kendell and Myles believed the women’s souls the baron held captive in Guinee were the Malveaux curse guardians. With the baron captured, the women have been freed to move on to the deep waters, thus ending the curse.”
“A nice story. One I’m sure you fostered.”
“Those two were beginning to see this place as a twenty-four, seven information desk. Giving them a mission meant I could get back to my business.”
Lincoln understood very well about giving someone what they thought they wanted as a means of getting them off his back. He had enjoyed playing with Kendell’s musical aspirations like a child dangling a ball of string in front of a kitten. Sexy little minx. “It also meant they did most of the work in drawing forth the baron.” He held up his wrists to show Delphine the baron’s old cufflinks. “You and I both know the curse isn’t ended. These chunks of metal still mean me harm.”
She flashed him the same cross look he remembered as a boy searching through her trunks for information about his family. “Those aren’t toys.”
“Teasing an opponent into thinking they have the upper hand often has a way of exposing their weaknesses. My point is someone is still standing watch over the curse.”
“Assuming you’re right about that old woman, what would you hope to learn from her?”
The memory of the swamp witch’s blind blue-white eyes still unnerved him. “You told me back then that she was an oracle, and she called me the family’s fulfillment. It didn’t mean much to me then, but now that I have the baron, I need answers. If you can’t tell me what I need to know, maybe she can.”
“Even if it were that old hag, she must be long dead by now.”
Thirty years before, Delphine’s tactics of distraction might have worked on him, but he’d participated in too many hostile board meetings to be so easily dissuaded.
“Then someone will have taken her place,” he said. “I have the resources to drain every bayou in a hundred-mile radius to flush her out.”
She was clearly weighing her options, which meant he’d already won. “It would be best if you didn’t. She’s a Wiccan High Priestess. Marie liked to use opposing forces to keep her spells in check. Wicca and voodoo mix about as well as oil and water. The last thing New Orleans needs is an interparanormal war.”
“Then come with me. Make the introduction. We’ll both hear what she has to say.” Dangling the prospect of retaining some control over a situation had tripped up more than one of his opponents.
* * *
Lincoln knew he could have an airboat out on the jetty off Interstate 55 in half an hour. From there, they could skim across the water hyacinths and be out to the cypress swamp in another hour. The whole excursion could be completed in half a day, and he’d still have time for meetings in his office. However, that wasn’t how things were done in rural Louisiana. Flashing a lot of cash was likely to alienate the locals, and the swamp witch wasn’t exactly findable on GPS. As it was, his brand-new Levi’s and fresh-from-the-package T-shirt made him stand out like a city-slicker con man. Even the year-old Ford Expedition made him feel like a wannabe adventurer. At least it wasn’t as showy as the Mercedes.
Delphine did the talking to the fishermen and crawfish trappers. “I’m looking for someone who can navigate the tributaries without a motor. I need to get deep into the Honeydew bayou—out to the cypress grove. If you know the area, you probably know who I’m looking to find.”
None of the mud-stained men gave her much attention as they loaded their small outboard motorboats with gear. Even Lincoln knew the area wasn’t to be attempted by anyone unfamiliar with the myriad of creeks, islands, and marshes. He’d probably get lost after the first bend in the river.
Delphine leaned against the grill of his SUV. “Now, we wait.”
“For what?”
She nodded toward the men pushing off their small aluminum boats for a hot, muggy, mosquito-filled day on the water. “Those guys might not seem very chatty, but they’re worse than an old wives’ club when it comes to gossiping out on the water. There’s not a lot to do while waiting for mudbugs to find their way into the traps. The people we’re looking for can’t be approached by car. Word will have to seep into the swamp like fresh water let in from the spillway. If no one contacts us by two this afternoon, we’ll head back to town and try again tomorrow.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “I expected to have this wrapped up by this evening.”
“You expected wrong. Even if we do find the swamp witch, she’ll want us to stay the night as our rite of passage. Assume for a minute that you’re right about her being the custodian of the Malveaux curse. Do you really think she’s just going to give up her secrets because you ask? Better start thinking about how to convince her because money or threats aren’t going to work. She’ll have the specter of Marie Laveau hanging over her head.”
All he’d been focusing on was finding the old woman. Convincing her to talk hadn’t entered his equation. “She said I was the fulfillment. That has to count for something.”
“Don’t bet on it. From what I remember, she wasn’t swayed by conversation involving logic.”
They had time with little else to do but talk, so he seized the opportunity. “How well do you know her?”
Delphine’s heavy sigh indicated the topic wasn’t unexpected. “I first met her not long after my mother moved us back to New Orleans from Haiti. I must have been about six years old. Even then, I thought that witch was old. She was probably younger than I am now.”
“Did you come out to the swamp?”
Delphine stared out at the water. “No. She found us. Mother wanted to keep a low profile when it came to Marie’s descendants until she knew the various factions of the family. By being nonthreatening, she was able to buy up a lot of Marie’s journals without eliciting much suspicion—not that my tourist-obsessed charlatan relatives gave a rat’s ass about our family’s history. One day, I came home from school and found the swamp witch sitting in our parlor like she owned the place. The way mother doted on her, I figured she had to be important. Of course, they didn’t discuss anything in front of me. I was just a child.”
“Did she become a regular visitor?”
Delphine’s laugh had a sarcastic edge to it. “Hardly. I didn’t see her again until I was in high school. She’s been like a phantom in my life. I think she just likes checking in to see if I’m still here.”
“You mean in New Orleans?”
“I mean in life. Each time I look in her eyes, it’s lik
e she expects me to be dead. I can’t explain it. It’s like she’s trying to burn me to the ground just by turning those dead orbs at me.”
He hadn’t considered how much Delphine might dread the excursion. Then again, he seldom worried much about what others thought or felt when he was on a quest. “Then there was the time I met her with you.”
“You put too much stock in that meeting. She’s not a voodoo priestess. Me saying she’s an oracle is like you saying someone’s good with numbers. You use that person to get an insight into another business that you’re not familiar with to gain an edge, but you don’t envy their position. Wicca is more like a predecessor of science. They think they can see energy currents moving through plants and animals.”
“If you don’t believe in it, why did you make me promise never to discuss the meeting?”
Delphine shrugged. “You were a kid who wanted to be an artist. I’d hoped by not talking about her, you might forget her. Wouldn’t you have been happier not following what your family wanted of you?”
“So you think her comment worked to change my life’s direction?”
She turned to survey the horizon though no boats were answering their call. “Hasn’t it? You’ve grown more obsessed with your family’s source of power every year. Now that you think you’ve captured it, you’re looking for the user’s manual on what to do with it. Since I can’t instruct you, you’re hoping this hermit of a witch might.”
He had to confess she wasn’t wrong. “What does it mean to be a guardian? What will she know about the curse?”
“You’re talking advanced voodoo. Marie knew some of her spells would last generations. By handing one set of facts to one faction, like the diaries she left her descendants, and putting other information in the hands of the opposition, she ensured someone would always be around in case something went wrong. By design, I have no idea what she knows—if anything.”
