The Ghosts of Bourbon Street

by Seanan McGuire

  The Ghosts of Bourbon Street

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  “There’s nothing wrong with pausing to catch your breath every so often. It’s best to live a balanced life when you can, and that means enjoying yourself. You only live once, after all.” --Alice Healy

  An empty field just outside of New Orleans, Louisiana

  Now

  “Verity?”

  “Mmm?” I kept walking along the edges of the circle I had drawn in the loose red earth, dripping candle wax into the furrows. The original ritual wanted tallow mixed with human blood, not organic soy wax and saline solution, but it’s important to move with the times. Besides, finding a place high and dry enough to cast the spell had been difficult, and had used up most of my ability to be picky about the little things. New Orleans is not a city that prides itself on its high local water table.

  “Experience has told me that I will regret asking you this question, and yet I feel the need to ask it anyway. What, precisely, are you doing?”

  “Classic road ghost summoning circle. It’s sort of like lighting a big neon billboard in the twilight—that’s the default road ghost afterlife—that says ‘hey, come on over here, I’d be happy to buy you a cup of coffee.’”

  Dominic’s expression turned even more dubious. He was backlit by the sunset, standing tall and disapproving and a little bit uncomfortable in his jeans and white T-shirt, and he couldn’t have looked more like a member of the Covenant of St. George trying to masquerade as a tourist if he’d been trying. We were going to have to work on that. There were people I wanted to stop off and visit on the western side of the Mississippi, and most of them would run screaming if the Covenant showed up on their doorsteps.

  “Verity, I have no experience whatsoever in asking my next question, and yet I am absolutely sure that I am going to regret it.” Dominic paused. “Why are you drawing a, ah, ‘classic road ghost summoning circle’? Are we planning to perform an exorcism?”

  “What? No!” I jerked upright so fast that hot wax splattered onto my hand, making me suck in a breath of air through my clenched teeth. That sort of thing was always a risk when you were conducting a ritual that required candle wax. That was one of the many reasons we had switched to using soy candles, which melted at a lower heat and were thus a lot less likely to actually scald the people who were holding them.

  Not that the Louisiana heat wasn’t already doing a fine job of scalding me. How people lived here full time was something I would never understand. The sun was going down, and it still felt like high noon. High, horribly humid noon.

  I let my breath out slowly, focusing through the pain, and resumed sketching the circle as I said, “Don’t use the ‘E’ word again, okay? You remember when you said you wanted to meet my family, but were nervous about doing it all at once? Well, this is the solution to your nerves. I’m going to introduce you to my aunt.”

  “To your aunt.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who cannot be reached on the telephone.”

  “Not so much, no. She’s sort of outside the service area a lot of the time.”

  “But who can be reached via a summoning circle.”

  “Yup.” I reached the point in the circle where my wax dribbles began. I poured more wax on top, just to make sure the thing was sealed, and then rammed the base of the candle down into the hardening mess. The flame guttered, but didn’t go out. “She’s old fashioned that way.”

  “Verity?” Now Dominic was starting to sound a little strained. Poor guy. Every time he thought he had a handle on what he was getting himself into, I went and upped the ante on him again.

  “Yeah?” I picked up my box of unlit tapers, lighting the first one off the candle that was already burning, and began my second trip around the circle, placing lit candles every few feet.

  “Is your aunt by any chance deceased?”

  I looked up long enough to flash him a sunny smile. “And people say that Covenant boys don’t understand logic. Yes, Aunt Rose is a posthumous American. She died in the 1950s. We try not to talk about it too much, since it tends to make her cranky.”

  Dominic looked at me blankly. “I see. Your aunt is dead. Added to your cousin, the telepath, and your grandmother, the wanderer in distaff dimensions, is there anything else I should be aware of before we get to Oregon?”

  “Dad snores.” I jammed the last candle into the dirt. “There. Done. Now we just need to make the connection. Can you get me that bag of hamburgers from the truck?”

  “You can’t possibly be hungry,” he objected. “We ate an hour ago. You ate a club sandwich the length of my forearm.”

  “I’ll be hungry if I want to,” I said primly. “Burgers, please.”

  Dominic looked at me for another few seconds, apparently waiting for the punch line. It didn’t come. I raised an eyebrow, making a “hurry it up” gesture with one hand, and he sighed before turning and heading back toward the truck. I smirked. I was going to get that boy accustomed to what it meant to be a Price before we made it to Oregon, where he would be facing the ultimate challenge to his tolerance, flexibility, and sanity: my parents.

  My name is Verity Price, and up until quite recently, I was trying to make a name for myself as a ballroom dancer in Manhattan. The name I was trying to make was “Valerie Pryor,” since it’s not exactly safe to be a Price girl these days, on account of how there’s an ancient order of monster hunters called the Covenant of St. George trying to wipe us all off the map. My boyfriend, Dominic de Luca, was a member of the Covenant, again, until very recently, and has had to do a lot of adjusting since he decided to choose love over the systematic slaughter of hundreds upon thousands of innocent beings. We’re a real modern Romeo and Juliet, except for the part where neither one of us is dead, and I don’t think Romeo was prone to standing on the roof of Midwestern Holiday Inns, doing his best doleful Batman impression.

  Dominic still has a lot of work to do if he wants to socialize into normal human society, is what I’m saying here.

  He returned from the U-Haul that was our current home on the road with the bag of Jack in the Box burgers and fries that I had stopped for three exits back held gingerly in one hand. “Your burgers,” he said, thrusting it toward me.

  “Thank you.” I took the bag before stepping carefully over the candle wax line and walking to the center of the circle. Once I was sure I was in exactly the right place I put the fast food goodies down. Straightening up, I cupped my hands around my mouth, and called, “Aunt Rose! It’s Verity! Soup’s on!”

  “Jeez, Blondie, you don’t have to yell.” The voice was sweet, female, and young—no older than sixteen—with the broadly softened vowels that had been common in the Buckley region of Michigan some sixty years ago. Dominic made a startled noise, somewhere between a yelp and a curse. And I smiled, turning slowly to face the dead woman who had appeared out of the air behind me.

  Rose Marshall—aka “the spirit of Sparrow Hill Road,” aka “the Girl in the Diner,” aka “trouble in a green silk gown”—was standing with her arms crossed and one hip shot casually to the side, like an advertisement for vintage hooliganism. As was her wont, she was dressed in the timeless hitchhiker’s style: blue jeans and a white tank top, sturdy white tennis shoes just dirty enough from the road that hopefully no one would look at them twice, and thus no one would notice that the grass under her feet wasn’t bending. She displaced nothing; she was air and memory and a smirk you could have used to power an entire army of rebellious teens.

  I answered her smirk with a smile, and said, “I thought you might be hungry. All of that endlessly wandering the earth looking for the man who murdered you and everything.”

  �
��Way to make me sound like some kind of fucked-up teen drama, Blondie.” Rose shot a longing look at the bag of burgers sitting in the center of the circle. If I squinted, I could see the field clean through her, unplanted soil stretching out until it met the encroaching horizon. She wasn’t wholly here. Not yet. “It’s nice of you to think of me and all, but you know the rules.”

  “I do.” I turned to look across the circle to Dominic, who was staring at the two of us with the poleaxed expression of a man who had just seen his last hopes for a rational universe torn down in front of him. He met my eyes, pale and blinking. I sweetened my smile until it wouldn’t have been out of place in an international waltz competition, all gleaming teeth and dimples. “Honey, can you grab me a coat, please?”

  “I—what?”

  “My Aunt Rose here,” I indicated Rose, who raised one hand in a quick wave, “is what we call a hitchhiking ghost. Her big parlor trick is rejoining the living for short periods of time, but she can only manage it when she has an article of clothing borrowed from someone who isn’t dead.”

  He blinked again, before looking faintly alarmed and saying, “I am not giving my jacket to a dead woman.” He paused. “Ah, no offense, miss, I’m sure you’re very pleasant for an unquiet spirit condemned to walk the earth eternally.”

  Rose threw her hands up in disgust. “Oh my God you found one who’s just like you.”

  “No, Aunt Rose, I didn’t,” I said. “He actually means that. Dominic, I don’t want your coat—although that would be hysterical, she’d be swimming in it—I want you to get my coat out of the front seat of the truck.”

  “Oh.” Dominic looked abashed. “I will…ah. I will be right back.” Turning, he strode off toward where we’d parked the U-Haul. He even managed to make that look overly dramatic. The boy had a gift.

  I wasn’t the only one who watched him go. Rose observed his retreat before turning to me and saying, “You could have had the coat out here and waiting for me.”

  “True,” I agreed.

  “The last time you drew a summoning circle, you had the coat out and waiting for me.”

  “Also true.”

  “Should I conclude that you didn’t bring the coat because you were messing with the boy? Because Very, I gotta tell you, messing with boys is fun, but if you do it for too long, they’re likely to get pissed about it.”

  I shook my head, sobering. “I know, but there are extenuating circumstances.”

  “Like what?” Rose folded her arms, frowning at me, and I was struck once again by the incongruity of her eyes. They were so old, and her face was so young, and always would be. “You must be getting pretty serious about him, if you brought him out here to meet me. That usually signals the end of the messing with period.”

  “It would have, except that when we met he was an active member of the Covenant of St. George.”

  Rose whistled, a high, descending note that sounded almost like a whippoorwill’s cry. “You do not fuck around when it comes to making things hard on yourself. Shit, girl, your family hasn’t been on their radar since Tommy boy. Is he really worth risking everything for? Does he have a magic dick or something?”

  Most of us got used to Rose by the time we were out of our teens. She was our friendly family ghost, and if she was a little more profane than Casper or Betelgeuse, that was just part of her charm. I still felt my cheeks go red at her last comment. “That’s none of your business, okay? I just want him to get used to us before I take him home to meet the parents.”

  “Which is why you’re crossing the country the slow way—smart.” Rose nodded approvingly. I stared at her. She snorted. “I’m a road ghost, remember? I can tell when someone’s been traveling slow and steady. You feel like a few hundred miles of easy riding, and that’s not normal for you.”

  “U-Haul,” I admitted. “Me, Dominic, the mice, and a roadmap of America. I figure we’ll make it back to Oregon before the end of the year. Maybe. If we don’t decide to stop off in Ohio and visit with the grandparents for a little while.”

  “I’d point out how that’s in the wrong direction, but I have the odd feeling you already know.” Rose looked at me solemnly. “If you’re taking him that far out of your way, do yourself a favor and stop off in Michigan before you turn toward home. He deserves to see where his people ran yours to ground.”

  “He made his choice,” I said. “It’s too late for him to back out on it.”

  “Maybe the Covenant won’t have him back, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep him.” Rose shook her head again, harder this time. “Your family has always been in the habit of taking in strays. Hell, you took me in. I’m about as stray as it gets. Just make sure this one isn’t going to bite before you go taking him home, okay?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, and stopped, smiling with relief as I saw Dominic approaching, the denim jacket I’d bought for just this occasion held in one hand. “He’s back,” I said. “Now be nice, okay, Aunt Rose? I’ll buy you something hot and covered in cheese if you’ll just be nice.”

  “I am easily purchased with cheese,” said Rose, and turned to face Dominic, holding her hand out toward him.

  He glanced at me uneasily. I nodded, and he handed her the jacket.

  “Thank you,” said Rose, and smiled guilelessly as she swung the tattered thrift store denim over her shoulders and slipped her arms into the sleeves. The weight of the jacket settled on her thin frame, and her feet settled on the ground, suddenly displacing the grass. There was no drama to the transition, no special effect that would win the universe an award: just one suddenly solid teenage girl standing in the middle of a circle drawn in wax and dirt and prayer.

  She brushed her hands against her jeans before tilting her head back and taking a deep, slow breath of the sweet summer air. “Damn, that’s nice,” she said. “I always forget how warm it is in Louisiana this time of year.”

  “It’s always cold in the twilight,” I said to Dominic, by way of explanation. He nodded, trying to look like my statement held any real meaning.

  Rose lowered her head and grinned at him. She smiled like the teenager she was always going to be, sharp and sweet at the same time. “It’s okay, big guy. You don’t need to understand the ins and outs of the American afterlife on your first encounter. You just need to follow one basic rule for dealing with the dead and you’ll be fine.”

  “What’s that?” asked Dominic warily.

  This time, there was nothing but sugar in her smile. “When a dead girl asks you to buy her a drink, you do it.”

  Thanks to the tourist trade and the ever-looming specter of Mardi Gras—which never fully went away, not even in the late spring—New Orleans was a city rich in bars, taverns, and other forms of drinking establishment. Not even the still-visible scars left by Katrina could keep their doors closed for long. We parked the U-Haul in the secure garage of a creepy little motel my family had an understanding with, owned by a friendly nest of harpies who didn’t really care what we wanted to store on their property as long as we also rented a room and left them a good Yelp review. Getting a room for the night seemed like the best possible idea no matter how we sliced things. Drinking with Aunt Rose is an experience best savored, sipped slowly and carefully like good cognac, rather than being slammed down like a cheap beer. Not because she’s a classy dame—she isn’t—but because getting drunk fast in her presence is basically inviting trouble.

  The mice cheered as they poured into the motel room. They would doubtless have decimated the local rat and June bug populations by the time we got back, and that was more than fine with me. If there’s one thing about New Orleans I can’t stand, it’s the vermin.

  Rose walked between us as we strolled down a gently curving avenue which either had no name or had somehow lost its street signs, probably to vandals. She linked one arm through mine and one through Dominic’s, forming a weird Wizard of Oz-style processional. “We’re going to have a blast tonight, kids,” she said blithely. “Just remember that y
ou’re buying, and everything will be just fine.”

  “Hitchhiking ghosts can temporarily rejoin the living under the right circumstances, but they can’t taste anything that wasn’t given to them freely and without payment,” I said, catching Dominic’s bewildered expression. “So Rose can’t buy her own drinks, but we can buy them for her.”

  “Ah,” he said slowly. “Has anyone ever tested this concept? It sounds like the sort of thing someone would invent for the sake of getting other people to supply their alcohol.”

  “Since basically everything we know about hitchhiking ghosts comes from Rose…” My voice tapered off as I turned to give my honorary aunt a hard look.

  Rose laughed. “Oh, I like him, Verity. You should keep him, and he should buy the first round.”

  “I like him too,” I said.

  “Where did you kids meet, anyway?” The incongruity of someone who looked almost ten years younger than me calling me and Dominic “kids” was mostly eased by the fact that I had known Rose for as long as I could remember. She was my family’s lost girl, never growing up, never growing old, and never getting the opportunity to go home.

  She wasn’t our only ghost. Aunt Mary—otherwise known as “Mary Dunlavy,” and nothing else, because unlike Rose, Aunt Mary had never decided to become an urban legend in her spare time—died when she was around the same age, just a few years sooner. But she’s never seemed as lost as Rose. If I wanted to stretch the metaphor, I’d have to call her Wendy, trying to do as right as she could by the lost ones who surrounded her. A little older, a little wiser, and a whole lot more resigned to her fate.

  “Manhattan,” I said. “It was totally romantic. A boy, a girl, a rooftop in the moonlight, a snare…”

  Rose crowed amusement. “Oh, man, you snared him? That’s not how you catch a boyfriend!”

  Dominic’s cough was small and discreet, almost swallowed by his hand. “Actually, I was the one who snared her. In my defense, I had no reason to expect human foot traffic in an area I expected to be transversed only by monsters.”