The Ghosts of Bourbon Street

by Seanan McGuire

  Dominic shot me a look. “There is only room for one outside the carriage,” he said.

  “Yup.” I leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “Listen to what Aunt Rose and the dead guy discuss. I’m going to pump the conveyance for information.” It only took me a hop and a prayer to seat myself next to the human-seeming portion of Amelia’s body. The others climbed into the waiting carriage. The door swung shut of its own accord, she flicked the reins, and we were off, riding silent and unseen into the New Orleans night.

  Amelia, it developed, not only had a wicked sense of humor, but she was addicted to terrible romance novels, the kind that even the library book sales usually wound up pricing at a dollar a box. “They fall into puddles, they are abandoned in the gutter, and their frail ghosts come to us, for a time,” she confessed. “I have to read quickly, before they dissolve completely, but their stories are so stirring, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve enjoyed a romance novel or two in my time,” I allowed, trying not to think too hard about where a woman who was also a carriage and a pair of horses—stallions, no less—would get a “stirring.” Since I wasn’t aiming to date her, it was really none of my business. “I tend more toward the non-fiction side of the shelf.”

  “Ah,” she said, sounding mournful. “A realist. How sad and adventureless your life must be.”

  It would be rude to laugh at her, and so I swallowed the urge, holding it in my belly like a ball of butterflies until it disappeared. “Yeah,” I said finally. “It can get a little dull sometimes, but I’m pretty good at finding things to occupy my time. You know, drinking with dead women, going for rides in haunted coaches…how are you a haunted coach, anyway? Was there some sort of post-death career fair, and this is what you chose?”

  “My father disliked the man I chose for myself. He was not rich, nor did he come from an excellent family, but he loved me. We would have been happy together. On the night we ran away, we were pursued. Our carriage took a turn badly; one horse broke his leg, the other, his neck. I was trapped inside while the whole thing burnt.” She spoke as calmly and dispassionately as if she’d been describing the weather. “When I awoke, I was among the dead, in the place they call the twilight, and I had become the carriage that was meant to be my conduit to freedom. The universe never tires of little ironies, does it?”

  I stared at her veiled face, too horrified to look away. “How…how long ago was that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Long ago. Everyone who knew me is dead and dust and buried, and my kind are rare in this age, as your little road ghost so delicately observed. But New Orleans is my home, and what of my horses? They are both of me and apart from me, and I can’t be sure we wouldn’t be separated in whatever lies beyond this afterlife. Having spent so long together, it would be hell to be apart.”

  I blinked. A lot. “Death is more complicated than I thought it would be.”

  “Oh, little living girl. You have no idea.”

  She drove on, through the shadowy streets of the city. There weren’t enough people; it was like being back in Rose’s alley, where half of what I saw didn’t seem quite right, and other half was only shadows. We were driving through whatever layer of the ghost world was accessible to the living, and while part of me thought that was the coolest thing ever, most of me really, really wished I hadn’t had quite so much to drink before I allowed myself to be drafted by the dead. This seemed like the sort of thing that was absolutely destined to end badly.

  I had said that I was going to ride up front so I could pump her for information, but as we drove through the dark, I couldn’t think of a single question. All I could do was watch the world go by, shrouded in mist, filled with the dead.

  Amelia reined her horses in and brought us to a stop in front of a crumbling house with Victorian lines and caution tape strung around the porch. I heard the carriage door swing open, and looked over the side to see Rose emerging onto the street, closely followed by Dominic and Jermaine.

  “Your destination,” said Amelia. Those too-red lips curved into a smile. “I enjoyed our talk.”

  “I’ll see about burning some really juicy romance novels for you before we leave town,” I said.

  She smiled brightly. Somehow, the expression wasn’t as disturbing as it should have been, even though the rest of what should have been her face was only an empty veil. “I would like that very much. Thank you, little living girl. If you ever need a ride in New Orleans, you need only throw a silver dime into the nearest pool of standing water and say my name.”

  “Cool,” I said, hopping down to the sidewalk. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” The carriage doors slammed. With a gust of hellish laughter, Amelia went tearing off down the street, disappearing into the side of a wall.

  I turned to the others. Dominic looked horrified. Rose looked annoyed. Jermaine just looked confused, like this was the one potential outcome he simply hadn’t banked on. “She’s nice,” I said. “A little creepy, in that ‘dead for centuries and my butt is a carriage’ sort of way, but nice.”

  “Your momma raised you right,” said Rose with a smile, and turned to face the boarded-up, caution-taped deathtrap in front of us. The houses to either side weren’t in much better condition. I guessed that we weren’t in one of the better parts of town. “All right, Jermaine. Talk to me about the house.”

  “Condemned after bad storm flooding—the final straw in a series of final straws for the poor old dame. She was a beautiful home in her prime. I think she may haunt herself for a time, when she finally finishes struggling to stay alive.” Jermaine’s voice had an almost reverent tone to it, like the history of New Orleans and her houses was the most important thing in the universe. “Sadly, her owner didn’t take the order to vacate very well.”

  “Suicide?” guessed Rose.

  Jermaine nodded. “Pills and liquor. The coroner said it was quick; he had little time to suffer, and less to change his mind.”

  “Verity, is the dead man implying that he has regular conversations with the city coroner?” murmured Dominic, leaning close in an effort to keep his words between us.

  Too bad for him he didn’t realize that the dead have excellent hearing. “She’s the great-great-grandniece of a close friend, and why shouldn’t I have conversations with her?” asked Jermaine. “Besides, it’s in my best interests to keep up relations with the friendly living. I am one of the oldest ghosts in this city. The ways in which people die are relevant to me. They impact how those people may manifest in the city’s twilight.”

  “Man’s got a point,” said Rose. “So let me guess: he killed himself because he didn’t want to leave his house, and after he died, he didn’t leave the house. Has he become the house?”

  Jermaine shook his head. “Thankfully, no. He haunts it, but hasn’t merged with it. I think that, in his affection, he never considered that he and the house could be one.”

  “Do a lot of dead people merge with inanimate objects?” I asked warily, the image of Amelia still fresh in my mind. No member of my immediate family has left a ghost in at least three generations, but that didn’t make the idea of becoming a permanent part of a lamppost or something very appealing.

  “Usually it’s only if they really, really loved those objects while they were alive,” Rose reassured me. “Amelia probably didn’t love her carriage, but I bed she loved her horses. Most ghosts just get what I got, the ‘these are the clothes you died in and they’ll come back any time you’re stressed or in danger’ package. Don’t worry about it, honey, I’m sure if you decide to stick around after you die, you’ll stay bipedal and pretty.”

  “Your aunt has a very strange idea of what constitutes ‘reassuring,’” murmured Dominic. I just laughed.

  Jermaine didn’t share my levity. “We construct our floats in the ghost of a warehouse that used to stand near here. Since this man died, we’ve been having break ins, vandalism…always during the day, always when we have gone off to our duties or our resting pl
aces. He does not like what we do. He never cared for Carnival, and thought that once he joined the dead, he would get some peace.”

  “Instead, he got a party that doesn’t have to follow civic regulations,” I said. “Okay, but why do you need living people? He’s a ghost, breaking ghost stuff, and this is outside our jurisdiction.”

  “He has dwelt in this home for seventy years,” Jermaine said. “He buried his wife while he lived here. He greeted four children and watched them all leave the city that he loved behind them. He married his abode in all ways but the legal, and she does not want him to be bothered.”

  “The house won’t let you in,” I said.

  “Correct.”

  “The haunted house with the angry dead dude in it won’t let you in.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so you want us—” I gestured between Dominic and myself “—to go in and convince him to stop breaking your shit, because you can’t do it.”

  “Yes.” Jermaine glanced toward Rose as he added, “All three of you. You walk among the living. That puts you in a much better position than any of my people.”

  “You don’t have anyone who can borrow flesh for a night? In New Orleans? I call bullshit, especially when you’re walking around looking all solid and human and crap.” Rose folded her arms, looking at him levelly. “You just didn’t want to risk yourself, or any of your people, and when you saw a stranger who looked like she might fit the bill—”

  “No. Stop.” Jermaine’s image flickered again, young man becoming old and foreboding before returning to illusory youth. “You are not a stranger here, Angel of the Overpass, Girl in the Diner. You haven’t been a stranger here in fifty years. I would have come to you even if you hadn’t been in the company of a living man who looked like he might be…useful.” There was a speck of shame in the word. It faded quickly, replaced by a look of lecherous appreciation that probably went over well with the drunk bar girls. “I always wanted to meet the girl who thwarted Bobby Cross.”

  It didn’t go over well with Rose. “I don’t know how fast the gossip network runs these days, but I’m taken, and while our relationship has its negotiable points, it doesn’t include dead boys,” she said. “Are you denying that you wanted to talk to me because you didn’t want to risk your own people?”

  “No,” Jermaine admitted, after a long pause. “They are dear to me. You may be a legend, and a beautiful one at that, but your afterlife has no personal value for me or for my city.”

  “Great. Just wanted to clear that up.” She turned to me and Dominic. “Wanna go meet the cranky old man who’s trying to clear the dead kids off his lawn? It probably won’t be fun, but it definitely won’t be Old Man Smithers in a rubber mask.”

  Dominic stared at her blankly.

  Rose sighed. “Honey, I died before that show even came on the air. How is it that I can make the references and you don’t get them?”

  “Covenant,” I said. “He had a sheltered childhood. And I’m always game for walking into certain danger, as long as you promise to find me something solid enough that I can kick it in the crotch.”

  “Works for me,” said Rose. She looked back to Jermaine. “Did you leave anything out? Keep in mind that I can haunt you so hard you’ll think you’re back among the living.”

  “I have told you all we know, save for his name,” he said solemnly. “You are entering the home of Mr. Benjamin Georges.”

  “Great,” said Rose. “Let’s go be Ghostbusters.”

  The walkway leading to the front door was cracked and broken, with tufts of grass shoving their way between the brick until we might as well have been walking on the lawn. Jermaine stayed on the sidewalk. I glanced back once, when we reached the porch; he had gone half-transparent, visible only in the way he bent the light. I looked back to Rose.

  “Okay, are we in the lands of the living or the lands of the dead right now? Because that seems like the sort of thing it would be good to know.”

  Rose mounted the porch steps with calm ease, stepping onto what appeared to be empty air. It held her weight. “You can’t think of things as being black and white, not here,” she said. “The twilight comes in layers. Right now, we’re in one of the top layers, almost back into the daylight, but not quite. You’re close enough to the dead that they can see you. Also, mind the missing step. I don’t think you’d enjoy finding out what’s under the porch.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “Ghost physics.” The porch steps groaned and shifted as Dominic and I climbed them, careful to avoid the broken places. They didn’t give way. That was something, at least. I’m pretty nimble, but it’s hard to dance the cha-cha with a broken ankle.

  “I do not think I enjoy ‘ghost physics,’” said Dominic.

  “No one does,” said Rose. The front door was blocked by a strip of caution tape but standing slightly ajar. It was also closed.

  I blinked. The strange double-image remained. The door was open, showing a slice of mold-encrusted hallway beyond, and the door was closed, showing nothing but itself. The fact that it was happening at the same time didn’t seem to matter. “Aunt Rose…?”

  “I’ll get one, you get the other one.” She reached out and grasped the doorknob on the closed door, turning it until something clicked, almost sub-audibly. Slowly, she pushed the closed door open. It melded seamlessly with its double. She let go of the knob and looked to me. “Your turn.”

  I reached out. The wood felt normal under my fingertips: damp from the night air, but firm and solid. I pushed. It swung inward, revealing more of the moldy hallway. There was a threadbare carpet running down the middle of the floor. Mushrooms and muck covered the edges. “Ew,” I said.

  “She’s a beauty,” said Rose, and stepped inside. Her jacket—my jacket—remained on the porch. She spun toward us, her eyes wide and startled in her suddenly pale face, and I had time to see her clothing unravel into a green silk gown that would have been daring in 1952 but was old-fashioned now. Her hair grew out until it was long and the color of straw, hanging in curls past her shoulders—and then the door slammed by itself, and Rose was gone.

  “Rose!” I flung myself at the door, grabbing the knob and twisting as hard as I could. It refused to budge. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit did I just get my dead aunt killed oh shit my parents are gonna murder me—”

  “Let me try.” Dominic pushed in beside me, pulling a knife from inside his shirt. I blinked at him. He shook his head and said, grimly, “We always carry a few silver blades. It’s policy. Silver distresses the dead, does it not?”

  “Not if the white ladies with the jewelry fixations are anything to go by, but please, be my guest.” I stepped aside.

  Dominic inserted the tip of his silver knife into the keyhole and twisted. Nothing happened. He twisted harder. There was a cracking sound, and when he withdrew the knife, it was sans point. He scowled. “As you wish,” he said, apparently to the house, pulled back his leg, and kicked the door clean off its rotting hinges.

  “That’s one way to take care of things,” I said, and barreled inside. “Rose?!”

  There was no response. The hallway was empty, and smelled like the underside of a rock, all dampness and mold and unpleasant surprises. It was impossible to tell what color the walls had originally been; between the low light and the things growing out of the plaster, I had the impression of unvarying gray.

  “Rose?” I said, more hesitantly.

  “Is this normally how things go when you get together with your family?” Dominic asked. The hinges creaked. We both turned to see them swing back into a closed position, which would probably have been terrifying, if they had still been connected to a door. The splintered remains of the door itself twitched a little, but didn’t fly off the floor and reassemble themselves.

  “Well,” said Dominic, sounding nonplussed. “That was profoundly anticlimactic.”

  “Go team anticlimax,” I said. “Anticlimaxes keep you breathing.” Unless you were never breathing to begin with. I
turned to look back down the mold-encrusted hall. “We need to find Rose.”

  “There is a second floor,” said Dominic.

  “Yeah, but without her, we don’t have access to ghost physics, and without ghost physics, one or both of us is going to plummet through those rotten-ass stairs, which could mean falling all the way down into the cellar. There’s no telling what’s down there.” I paused. “But maybe there’s another way.”

  Dominic gave me a dubious look. “Am I going to like this?”

  “Nope,” I said cheerfully. “Come on back outside. We need to find a jacket, and a brick.”

  And that is how I wound up half-drunk and dressed for a night on the town, clinging to the outside of a decrepit New Orleans house in the middle of the night, with a brick shoved into the pocket of my borrowed jacket. Jermaine hadn’t been pleased about giving me his coat. Once he’d figured out why I wanted a dead man’s jacket, Dominic had decided not to be pleased by the thought of me scaling the side of the building. I was doing it in order to smash my way through one of the second-story windows, so I figured the coat was among the least of my impending relationship problems—and besides, I was the one suffering through wearing the damn thing in the New Orleans summer. I glanced down. Dominic was standing in the remains of the lawn, and while I couldn’t see his expression from where I clung, I was pretty sure he wasn’t smiling.

  “I am so good at dating,” I muttered, turning my attention back to the climb. “I am like a goddamn ninja master of not upsetting my significant other.”

  At least the house wasn’t trying to shake me off, and while I’d stuck my fingers into a few rotten boards and patches of mold, nothing had started bleeding or developing unnecessary teeth. My guess had been right: Mr. Georges might have a degree of control over the interior of his house, but it didn’t extend to the outside—hence why Rose had been able to keep her grip on my coat until she crossed the threshold.