Ghost Train to New Orleans

by Mur Lafferty

  Anna nodded and went back to work, but Zoë didn’t miss the disappointment on her face.

  Even though she had politely turned down the young ghost’s offer, and even though she trusted Gwen and Anna’s assurances that ghosts wouldn’t just leap into her and kidnap her the moment she stepped off the train, and even though Gwen and the very groggy pair of Arthur and Eir were right behind her, Zoë still stepped from the bullet train with trepidation. She felt her wits remain with her, and took a deep breath.

  That’s when New Orleans discovered her.

  She was immediately assailed by sensations: heat and humidity, even though it was January, hurricane-force wind, the sound of jazz, and an immense sense of stability and comfort. She stumbled slightly and grabbed onto Eir’s arm.

  “Editor, excuse me, I do not need to be assaulted on our first working day together,” the goddess said, setting her back on her feet as if she weighed nothing.

  “Glad to see you’re back, Eir,” Zoë mumbled, trying to clear her head. Slaves and riverboats and madams and charlatans and a deep undercurrent of magic. The ground practically vibrated. One clear thought came through, and then was gone.

  Hello? Ida like to bid y’all welcome.

  CHAPTER 11

  Lodging

  Freddie’s Ready Bed-and-Breakfast

  Freddie is always ready. In fact, that’s his name, Freddie Who’s Always Ready. He runs Freddie’s Ready B and B and will have your every need catered to, even before you get there. Vampires will have light-tight rooms, zombies will have dehumidifiers, elemental spirits will have the proper living arrangements (he even has a room that is nothing but tubs for various water-loving coterie). His breakfasts suit everyone, and he even has a deal going with some citizens of the town for fresh blood donation and brain delivery. Each sleeping arrangement we encountered was superb, and Freddie was always ready with anything our team needed, from a first-aid kit to a spare phone.

  Freddie has had a fascinating past, and if you can get him to slow down for a moment, he’ll tell you about his grandfather, or his poetry, or the time he fought Muhammad Ali (and won).

  Just don’t ask him about his great-great-grandfather.

  CHAPTER SIX

  They met up with the rest of the writing team, Kevin steadfastly ignoring Zoë. She had intended to thank him for deciding that saving face and therefore her own life was more important than running like a coward, but she thought he might not appreciate attentions right now.

  New Orleans in the early morning was quiet, even the last partiers finally sleeping, or passed out, by five a.m. The train station filled with coterie, and some black-windowed taxis waited at the curb.

  Some coterie waited in the lobby to welcome friends or relatives, and it struck Zoë as odd to see zombies shuffling forward, arms outstretched for a hug. Zombies as a rule didn’t like touching humans—you never shake hands with a zombie—but apparently that didn’t apply to other zombies.

  (The exception to the rule was if they planned on eating someone, but that was pretty obvious.)

  “So we should get two cabs,” Zoë said, pointing at the vampires and Bertie the dragon for one, and herself, Arthur, Gwen, and Eir for the other. “Daytime walkers, let’s meet at noon, nighttime folks, we’ll meet after sundown.” The two groups headed for two different cabs, but Arthur didn’t move.

  “I’ll get my own,” Arthur said.

  Zoë stopped walking. She nodded to Eir and Gwen and told them to go on without her.

  She turned. “OK, why? We’ve sat six in a cab before and you were even angrier at me then than you are now. Not that I’m real clear on what you’re mad about.”

  Arthur had said few words since he woke up, but that was probably due to the Benadryl effects. So she had told herself.

  “You are here to write a book. I’m here to find someone who can save my life. If I go with you to your hotel, we’d just get in each other’s way.” His eyes flicked to Opal and Kevin, giving their baggage to a tall wood sprite to put in the back of his cab. “And besides, I try not to sleep in the same building as vampires. I don’t have the same death wish as you do.”

  “Death wish? My death wish?” Zoë took a deep breath. “Listen, we need to talk about this. I need to know why you drugged yourself to the gills last night. And I’m pretty sure I won’t be in your way if I am helping you find the Doyenne or whoever took over her research. If you go, it’s just going to make things tougher for both of us.”

  “I respected you when you said you wanted to keep working with monsters,” he said, his voice tight. “You need to respect me when I say I want to sleep in a monster-free building. I need to get some sleep, and so do you. Call me if you’re free for coffee or something this afternoon.”

  He turned and went walking past the coterie cabs, clearly looking for a human-driven cab.

  “You still haven’t answered the Benadryl question!” Zoë called after him. “Damn.”

  Her team was gone, and Zoë halfheartedly waved at a cab driven by a group of green-and-gold-wearing leprechauns. Four waited outside the cab to grab her suitcase, two held on to the steering wheel, two hopped from the driver’s seat to work the pedals, and all of them waved cheerfully at her.

  “Uh, how do you guys not crash?” Zoë asked as she took the back seat.

  “We rely on luck, and Darby’s our veteran up there,” said one of the little women who had helped carry her suitcase, now perched on the headrest of the driver’s seat. A little man with a white beard, presumably Darby, waved at her from the steering wheel. “Darby’s been driving for five whole weeks!”

  Zoë’s cab pulled up to the bed-and-breakfast, a brownstone one block outside the French Quarter. She frowned: each window she could see was covered only by white curtains. She wouldn’t cry if Kevin caught fire, but she didn’t want to be down one writer because of the wrong hotel booking.

  She paid the leprechauns one hell note apiece and gathered her luggage. She steadfastly did not think about Arthur as she climbed the three steps to the stoop, and then her not thinking about Arthur was interrupted when the door was swung open by a tall, grinning man with light-brown skin and a golden front tooth. He opened his arms and said, “Hello there, I’m Freddie Who’s Always Ready, and this is Freddie’s Ready B and B. You must be the last of the writing team, and you’re a human, but that’s OK by me, I got a real nice human room set up for you. The rest of your team are already in their bedrooms, the vampires down for the day, the others just getting the train off of them, I don’t care how new the fancy bullet train is, if you travel, you got travel stink on you, am I right? My daddy always told me you got fresh stink on you when you go to a new city, boy! He could scare away the white man, and he once cast a spell that got the police off our porch and they never come back. He gave me, a skinny little boy, enough strength to fight Muhammad Ali. I’ll tell you that story later. Now where y’all from?”

  Zoë watched this man with wide eyes. As he chattered he had gotten her bags and ushered her inside the foyer. It was ornately wallpapered in red and gold and had dark wood paneling. He led her up the stairs, and by the time they had gotten to her room, he had stopped talking and was looking at her as if expecting an answer.

  “Oh, uh. Born in New York City, moved to North Carolina when I was a kid, and recently returned to the city.”

  “No’Calana, huh?” he asked, unlocking a white door. “Then you got a taste of the South in you. I mean, you can’t make a true Southerner out of a Yankee, I beg your pardon, but as my mama said, you can put a kitten in an oven but that don’t make it a biscuit.”

  “I’m not a biscuit,” she agreed.

  He led her into the room. It was decorated with antiques: a comfortable-looking hand-carved chair with blue upholstery sat next to a fireplace, a bookshelf of worn, well-loved books stood on the opposite wall. The bed was a king-size four-poster with old-timey curtains blocking the whole thing.

  She had a fort! She had devolved to being seven ag
ain.

  “Is this room to your liking?” Freddie asked, suddenly professional and deferential.

  “Oh, yes, sure, it’s great,” she said.

  “Now, you’re gonna hear about haunted hotels,” he said, pouring her a glass of water from a metal pitcher that sat on a table next to the chair, “but I assure you, the ghosts here are paying customers and I don’t double-book rooms.”

  “Ghosts? What do ghosts pay with? I thought they couldn’t have physical items,” Zoë asked.

  “Some barter, some make deals with humans, some have built bank accounts with the ravens, they make do. They gotta.

  “Now, you get yourself some sleep and then come on down for some Freddie’s ready breakfast, it’ll set you right.”

  Zoë tried to tip him a hell note, but he ignored it and left.

  She collapsed onto the chair. The fire erupted into life beside her, and she just accepted it as a result of Freddie’s special skills. The chair was soft and conformed to her body, and she leaned her head back and dozed off without realizing it.

  An angry voice. “What the hell is wrong with her, Gwen? I told Phil we can’t have a fragile human as our leader! She can’t handle ghosts, can’t even handle her own boyfriend, how is she going to be able to handle anything?”

  A calm voice. “Last December she was fighting to protect the city. Where were you?”

  A soft, no-nonsense voice. “He was looting the Upper West Side.”

  The angry voice. “Fuck you, Opal. That doesn’t mean anything. We need her now, and we can’t count on her!”

  The calm voice. “She will be fine.”

  The angry voice. “I’m calling Phil.”

  Zoë didn’t want to open her eyes. She felt she was lying on something soft, a bed, and the room was dark.

  How did I get here?

  Her door opened. She cracked her eyes and was less than pleased to find Kevin standing there, drawing the curtains back, fangs extended, looming over her. His phone was in his hand, and Zoë was sure he was trying to look threatening with it, but he just looked like an angry banker.

  “What is wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Hi, Kevin,” she said, leaning on her elbow to struggle to a sitting position. Her head felt very heavy. “How’s your room? I guess hoping you’d opt for a sun-room was too much to ask, huh?”

  “Don’t give me that,” he said. “I want to know if you can handle yourself when we fucking need you. You’re in charge here, in case you forgot.”

  “Stop, your concern is unwarranted and might make me think you like me or something.”

  He hissed at her.

  “We are just concerned, Zoë,” said Opal, standing behind him, looking almost demure even though she was the dominant in the relationship as Kevin’s sire.

  Gwen stood, silent in the doorway, with Eir looking over her shoulder.

  “So you think I can’t handle myself if ghosts rob us. You think I’m going to die if I get shot.” Zoë rubbed her shoulder, wondering if the ache would always be there. Then she decided to be honest, as far as she dared, anyway. “Yeah, if I get shot, I’ll likely die. If something big is going on and I can’t handle it, yeah, I’ll call for help. Show me someone who doesn’t do that, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t have long to live.”

  “That’s not what a leader would say,” Kevin said.

  She sat up and crossed her legs under her. “OK, you win, Kevin. Go ahead and call Phil for me and tell him that after intense discussion with you, I’ve decided to quit.”

  Doubt flickered in his eyes. Zoë was under Phil’s protection, and verbal bullying was about as far as Kevin was allowed to go. If Kevin harmed her, Phil would react rather violently. Zoë didn’t know what Phil would do if he found out Kevin had bullied her into quitting, and by the look on his face, neither did Kevin.

  Bluff called, Kevin whirled on his heel and left the room, shouldering past the others and almost knocking down Opal, who followed him.

  “So glad our trip is starting out well,” Zoë grumbled.

  She sat up straighter and attempted to clear her head. She had a dim sense of the city’s presence, indignant and demanding that that vampire respect her or else.

  No, I’m not killing my coworker, even if he is a prick.

  The door opened again and Gwen came in, followed by Eir. “What time is it?” Zoë asked, looking at her phone to answer her own question. It was ten in the morning.

  “I came in, fell asleep in the chair, and then woke up here.” She squinted at the window, which had light curtains allowing the daylight to filter in. “How could Kevin come in here anyway? It’s daytime.”

  “This is a most remarkable bed-and-breakfast,” Eir stated, settling her huge frame into the antique chair that suddenly seemed much bigger to accommodate her. “It suits each guest. If a vampire walks into the room, the windows go black. If you need sleep, it will get you sleep.”

  “Never mind that I didn’t really want to sleep right away,” Zoë said, shrugging out of her jacket. “What bee crawled in Kevin’s scrotum?”

  Eir looked alarmed. Zoë sighed. “Figure of speech. Why is he so angry?”

  “Kevin’s mostly mad that we insisted on giving you the big room because you’re the boss. The fuss about the train was just his way of trying to show you weren’t fit to be the boss.”

  “I’m the boss till Phil says otherwise,” Zoë said. “Someday I’ll make him realize that. Or die trying.”

  She had meant it to be a flippant remark, but it sounded too likely for comfort.

  “We will hope it doesn’t come to that,” Gwen said. “The vampires have retired, and Bertie is napping. Eir and I were biding our time until you contacted us. She wanted to show me some of her favored places. Should we explore the city?”

  Zoë felt like an odd third wheel, the one without godlike powers, but she nodded. “I’ll do my own exploring and we can catch up with each other later.”

  Zoë walked with her head down, thinking she was like Ariadne from the Greek myth. Then she realized Ariadne had very likely existed, and it sounded as if she had been a citytalker. Zoë had exited the house without speaking to anyone else, glad to go out into the morning sunlight where she knew Kevin couldn’t follow—also glad to avoid Freddie and his machine-gun chatter. She imagined she could feel the vampire’s eyes on her back, but knew—or at least was pretty sure—he would fry if he looked out the window at her. Unless the house somehow let him.

  She walked with her head down because instead of using her eyes, she wanted to use her fledgling citytalker abilities to tell her where to go.

  “Please understand I’m new at this,” she muttered. After a few blocks into the French Quarter, Zoë had no idea where she was, but noted that the streets were cobblestone and the sidewalk cracked. She picked a direction at random and started walking.

  “Can you communicate with me?”

  The sensation was of an affirmative flavor, but Zoë got a distinct sense of a grandmother sitting on her porch, rocking and waiting.

  The city wasn’t going to work too hard to connect with Zoë. She had to do the work.

  “I’m not clear about what I’m doing, you know. I know of two other talkers, and one isn’t so much dead as…” She thought of a good way to describe Granny Good Mae. “I guess she merged with the city. It was a whole thing.”

  Silence and patience again.

  “The other one, well, he’s a dude I can’t trust at all. So I’m not going to be asking for his advice.”

  She turned down another street at random, seeing people in her periphery. Trucks and cars lumbered carefully down the narrow streets, and a zombie snoozed in an alley.

  She felt a sudden burst of inspiration. “But I came here specifically to meet you, and write about you. Not enough people know how wonderful you are, and I’m here to talk to you and tell them all about you.”

  Interest sparked.

  “But I need your help; can you help me? Can you t
ell me the best places to go for blood and brains and where to sleep and the best Carnival parties?”

  A bleary-eyed white guy wearing a Dartmouth sweat shirt obscured by ropes of plastic beads passed her on the sidewalk and looked at her with alarm, but then shook his head and went on walking.

  Cats.

  “Cats?” Zoë asked, doubt creeping into her voice. “Which cats?”

  Zoë looked up and saw the street had widened into a courtyard that contained a small park surrounded by a wrought iron fence. A statue was in the center, a man on a rearing horse. Zoë had a dim memory of a rearing horse meaning that he had died in battle or something, but she wasn’t sure. Circular paths wound around the statue, and flowers and decorative bushes bordered the paths. The street she had walked on had emptied into the courtyard that surrounded the fence on three sides, Decatur Street and the river bordering the fourth. In the courtyard, artists and fortune-tellers were setting up their tables. Zoë jumped when the tall white church behind her with a bell tower began to bong out the half hour. Ten thirty, she realized, and then noticed how hungry she was. She had forgotten Freddie’s promise of breakfast.

  “I don’t see any cats,” she said, and was startled when an audible voice answered her.

  “You won’t, not during the day. The cats only come out at night.” The speaker was a tall African American man in a gray suit. He leaned on the cane in his left hand and held a briefcase in his right. Black leather gloves covered his hands and a gray wide-brimmed hat shaded his face from the weak winter sun.

  “Oh, thanks,” Zoë said, blushing. “I’d just heard there were cats here.”

  “Cat person, are you?” the man asked, shifting his attention to an empty table at the corner of the courtyard by the fence.

  “Not really,” she said. “Was just interested, I guess.”

  “Come back to Jackson Square tonight. You’ll see them.” He opened his briefcase and began unpacking things, an old tarot deck, a pair of black dice, and a small statue of a dancing old man. “And they will see you.”