by Rainy Kaye
“Would you like a taste?” the woman behind the stand asked, smiling at me, eyes crinkled at the corners. She gestured at the mini jam tarts laid out across the table like jewels.
I veered toward the display and stopped in front of it, staring down at the food before lifting my attention to her. She had probably been dead a while, but it didn’t seem to have dulled her mood.
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m looking for information about my friend. She was abducted in Nebraska and brought down here. Any idea who might know something about that?”
The shine from the woman’s face flickered off. “Oh, honey, no one here would be involved in anything like that. Even the dead have hard limits.”
As she spoke, I shrank down inside. Everywhere we went, we ran into an obstacle or dead end.
She gave me a sad smile, and I tried not to look crushed. Pressing my lips together to fight back tears, I continued to take in the stands, but if what she had said was true, none of these people could help me.
Maybe not everything I needed to know was at the Dark Bazaar, after all.
A stand near me drew my attention, loaded down with jewelry splayed out and hanging from hooks along the poles and cover. They dangled in the slow breeze like windchimes.
I sized up the inventory, and then reached into my pocket, raising my head. The three women working the booth were clearly relatives. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say mother and her two adult daughters, but I didn’t know the rules of age in the afterlife.
The oldest-looking woman smiled at me and approached from farther back under the cover. “May I help you?”
I held up the heart necklace I had taken from the house. “Would you be able to break a spell on a piece of jewelry? Or, at least, tell me more about why it’s enchanted?”
Maybe no one knew anything about how to find Fiona, but perhaps someone could at least answer what was so important about that necklace.
She shrugged one shoulder and extended her hand. “I can try.”
Her daughters crowded around her as I trickled the necklace through my fist, into the mother’s palm.
She closed her fingers around it. After a few beats of my heart, she shook her head. “Sorry, dear, but there’s no enchantment on this.”
She offered the necklace back to me.
I frowned, slowly reaching for it. “You mean, there’s no magic on it, at all?”
She shook her head. “Nope, nothing. Not even a simple spell to keep it from rusting.”
Her smile was kind, as were her eyes, but my skin raced with heated irritation. I knew for a fact there was something on this necklace. Was she lying to me? Inept? How could a spirit that sold goods in a historic New Orleans graveyard know less about magic than me?
“Thanks,” I said curtly, snapping back the necklace. I turned and walked off.
My cheeks heated, both at my behavior and that Randall had witnessed it. I hadn’t meant to be a jerk, but not one damn thing made sense anymore. I was out-witted, out-skilled, and out-numbered, as it were. That was frightening enough. I didn’t need to be yanked around about a piece of jewelry, too.
Randall matched my pace, but he didn’t say anything about what had happened, or even give me a look. Just like that, the heated anger on my skin reformed itself as gratitude in my heart. If I felt out of place, Randall had to feel entirely lost. He knew even less than me about all this, and he still kept going.
I took a steadying breath, and then beamed up at him, eyebrows raised, trying to seem like I was making a big adventure of all this instead of slowly shriveling up in terror inside. He returned the smile, though he seemed as tired as I felt.
We made our way to the end of the row, before turning right and heading through more vendor stands. It seemed as if the entire cemetery had transformed into the bazaar. One stand had clay jugs as tall as my waist standing in front of it to one side. Another had rugs that seemed to shift ever-so-slightly on their own.
“If those are flying carpets, I want one,” Randall muttered.
“Better if they come with a genie,” I said.
“Well…” Randall tugged my arm to bring me to a halt. I nearly tripped over myself. “There is this.”
I massaged my shoulder with one hand as I turned to see what he had found. Straight ahead, the row turned back into mausoleums, as if we would cross an invisible line between the realm of the Dark Bazaar and reality, though these days it was hard to say what that actually was.
The last mausoleum on this side of that line was open, and had a ghostly cover over the front, like a patio. A gate swung loosely on its hinge, though it made no sound.
“Not ominous whatsoever,” I said dryly, but I headed toward the gate anyway.
I stopped in front of the structure and stared straight into the darkness of the interior, a portal into the underworld, perhaps.
A pale purple light flickered from deep inside. When I listened closely, I picked up a faraway tune, though I couldn’t tell if it had words.
Curling down my bottom lip, I took a step forward, toward the gate.
It slammed back against the fence, as if someone I couldn’t see had pulled it wide open for our entrance.
“Totally not a trap,” Randall murmured.
I had to agree it felt like one, but I led the way past the gate. There was definitely something blinking and making noise inside the crypt. I had to find out what.
Not like there was anywhere safe around here; it was just uncertain danger over the sure kind out on the streets.
At the entrance of the mausoleum, I stopped and peered inside. The purple light strobed as it passed over me like a searchlight. The music became clearer, and it sounded like humming. The distinct human quality to it made my skin crawl, given that it was coming from inside a place where the dead slumbered.
I inched inside, into the darkness. Randall stepped up beside me, and I kept part of my focus tethered to where he was. At the first sign of something wanting to eat us, we were out of here.
“Speak,” a man said.
I startled but swallowed down a yelp. I could not discern which direction he was, only that he was close. I felt like I could reach out and touch him.
“What are you seeking?” His voice carried around the chamber.
“Who says I’m seeking anything?” I asked, surprisingly defensive for not knowing what I was up against—and for someone who actually was looking for something.
The purple light passed over again, illuminating a large black box, about the size of a refrigerator, against the far wall. The light swept over the area again. On the third time, I made out the moon and sun painted on the box, and the big black window on the front. Across the top, stenciled letters read: Speak. Wish. Receive.
I blinked. “Um, is that a…fortune telling machine?”
Before Randall could reply, the man said, “Speak.”
I tried to face him, but I couldn’t find which direction the voice was coming from. “Okay, right…Speak. I’m looking for my friend.”
“Wish,” he said.
I paused, uncertain what I was doing, but the next step was—if the sign was any indicator—receive. I could totally use a free wish right about now.
I took a deep breath. “I need a way to find my friend.”
“Receive,” the man said.
The light passed over the machine again. I took a step forward, expecting it to light up with a creepy fortune teller bust in the display, or maybe something to reach out and grab me.
Neither happened.
Nothing did, at all.
Besides the glimpses of the machine in the purple light, there was nothing to see. It seemed like the man didn’t even exist.
The voice was probably coming from the machine. I had been talking to a carnival game.
Great.
I started to turn, but the machine thumped. I jumped back, closer to Randall, and tensed, waiting.
Seconds ticked by.
As the light swept o
ver again, a tube fell from the bottom of the machine and rolled onto the floor. I scrambled for it just as the world went black again.
I picked up the tube, and it felt like rolled paper. Careful not to squash it, I straightened up and looked at the machine.
The light brushed over it again. Just beyond the dark window, a shadow shifted. I flinched and stepped back. From inside the machine, a palm slammed against the black pane.
I screamed, stumbling backwards, and bolted out of the mausoleum. I ran, lungs tight, until I was past this strange part of the bazaar and back among the vendors.
Panting, I slowed and wiped my free hand over the top of my head. Randall stood next to me, and I avoided looking at the vendors. I didn’t want to invite anyone to strike up a conversation, to ask what we had done.
The answer was, I had no idea.
Trying to act perfectly normal, I strolled down the walkway, rolled paper in hand. I looked between the vendor stands, taking in the goods as if I was interested. Mainly, I just wanted to get out of here.
When we reached the end of the row, I nodded in the direction we had entered before heading toward it. We didn’t speak, didn’t even seem to breathe, until we found our opening in the fence and stepped back out onto the road.
Then, Randall said in a low voice, “If that paper just says something like, Kindness will lead you to success, I’m going to go back and take a hammer to that stupid arcade reject.”
“I agree with everything except the going back part,” I said.
We picked our way down the sidewalk, weaving into the road to avoid larger stacks of debris. There wasn’t much for traffic. In fact, it was hard to say how much of the city remained.
Finally, it felt like we had put enough distance between us and the cemeteries, though I wasn’t sure if it really even mattered. We came to a stop next to a tree that had tilted partway out of the ground but managed to stay upright.
I released a heavy breath. “Let’s see what this ridiculous thing is.”
Randall came up next to me and we huddled together.
The paper had the texture of parchment but was black. Nothing bound it into a roll except sheer will and obedience.
I unfurled the paper and held it up. A map had been drawn on it in white. As I watched, little bright blue dots flickered and disappeared. Others remained steady.
“What the actual…” I started.
Randall stepped around me to get a better look.
“It’s New Orleans,” he said. He pointed over my shoulder and traced some of the lines. “That’s cemetery one and two we just came from. We’re around here, I think.”
He tapped a spot on the map.
“Great, but what are all these little Christmas lights for?” I waved my hand at the paper.
He frowned. “Not sure…but if I’m right, that one over here…” He pointed to one of the steady dots. “That one is the closest to us. I guess if we really want to find out…”
I gave a half-sigh, half-growl as I dropped to the ground. “I just want to get Fiona and leave.”
He crouched next to me.
“Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, I think this thing”—he flicked the map still in my hand—“is the only option we have.”
He was right. There was no way of telling if that fortune telling machine had been a gimmick or not, but there was something to this map, at least. Maybe those lights were just the locations of brothels. Maybe they were something else.
Something useful to us.
There really was only one way to tell.
I stretched my spine until my upper back gave a satisfying snap.
Then I huffed. “Alright, then. Let’s go.”
15
There was no apparent rhyme or reason to which buildings survived the earthquakes, but they stood like sentinels towering over piles of rubble. My heart still jumped each time one of the carnival demons skittered nearby, but they never did more than occasionally stare at us.
Randall held the map and guided the way. I dragged right behind him, telling myself I was watching out for danger. I was the one with magic, after all.
Not that it made much of a difference.
I was just drained, mentally and physically. We seemed no closer to finding Fiona, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine where she was among all the chaos. If she was even still here. Maybe they had taken her somewhere else. I couldn’t hazard a guess why they had her in the first place, let alone what they intended to do with her.
The soles of my shoes crunched over shards of glass, and the sound carried down the empty street. I kept an eye out for the streamers or the oncoming parade, but it must have still been a few blocks away.
Hopefully, Joseph Stone was hot on the mage’s trail, ready to toss his ass back into the painting dimension.
We stepped off the broken sidewalk, into a park with tall, slender trees and grass spread across wet ground that squished ever-so-slightly with each stride. The air hung still and heavy.
A mosquito landed on my arm, and I absently slapped it as I followed Randall out of the park and back onto a road. We kept walking. My calves burned, and my shoulders hunched as I struggled to stay upright.
Eventually, Randall muttered, “This is a bit farther than I had realized…”
I resisted scoffing. He glanced at me sidelong, as if he could read my intentions.
The street meandered into what must have been a residential neighborhood. Half the signs were twisted or missing, and one that said Road Work had fallen onto a collapsed house in the middle of the street.
Randall stomped over to the edge of the road and headed down a gravel incline. I shuffled after him, and then steadied myself to keep from face planting into a cypress. He grabbed my arm and helped me down onto the grass. We wove through a group of trees and came out to the front of a hotel.
It looked old, but it could have been intentional.
Together, we peered at the map.
“The hotel is the dot,” I said. “That’s probably a bad thing, isn’t it?”
“Why would it be a bad thing?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I gestured around us. “Is there actually anything good here?”
“The beignets were great.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the hotel. It stood five stories tall with white columns topped with decorative capitals propping up an entablature. Spanning upwards, rows of dark windows with heavy drapes looked down on us from under a peaked roof.
It would be a let down if this place wasn’t haunted.
The parking lot stood empty, and the front entrance remained darkened and quiet, like everything else.
“So, why do you think the hotel is being indicated on the map?” I asked.
“I don’t know…” He frowned, staring down at the paper in his hand. He looked back at the hotel. “I think whatever we’re looking for, it’s inside.”
I winced. I wasn’t ready to take on a ghost, but it wasn’t like the city wasn’t already full of creepy things.
“I mean, it looks harmless enough, right?” I said, waving my hand in the general direction of the hotel. “It’s quaint. Right?”
“Charming, even,” he replied blandly.
“Exactly. Quaint, charming, and not at all the home of a spirit that has been seeking revenge for two hundred years.”
“Seventy-five, at most,” he said, and started forward.
Shoulders slumping, I trudged after him. We exited into the parking lot and made our way to the double glass doors. As we neared, I lifted my hand to shield my eyes and tried to peer through the darkness, but all I managed to see was my own reflection.
My hair was frizzy and disheveled, my skin was bumpy, and my clothes were dirty and looked like they smelled bad. I probably couldn’t even detect my own stench at this point.
Lovely.
I pushed open the door, less in a rush to go inside than I was to not have to see myself anymore. No bell chimed, but it probably wasn’t that kind of h
otel. The desk stood directly ahead, past several pillars, and in the hotel’s good old days—as in last week, before the mage decimated the city—staff probably mulled about, taking bags and escorting guests around.
Now, it was deserted. Randall came in behind me, and the door fell shut with a soft sound. He folded the map and tucked it into his back pocket.
I took in our surroundings. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling, and to the right stood a bank of elevators.
Randall hesitated. “I don’t see anything. This is totally the dumb shit that gets people killed in movies, but I was thinking…”
“We should check out upstairs,” I finished for him.
He nodded.
“On it,” I said, and headed straight for the elevators.
He matched my pace, glancing around as if he expected attendants to pop out at some point. No one did.
At the elevator, I pressed the up arrow button and waited. The digital number at the top of the elevator counted down as the car descended.
“At least there’s still electricity here,” I murmured.
“Maybe we should take the stairs,” Randall said, and I turned to him, lifting an eyebrow.
“Haven’t gotten in enough exercise lately?”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.
“There’s been a lot of earthquakes,” he said, his gaze drifting toward a door next to the elevators labeled stairs. “I’m not sure taking the elevator is safe.”
The elevator closed, leaving us to continue our debate.
“Safe?” I gestured around. “You mean like coming to New Orleans during the reign of one of the deadliest mages to ever live kind of safe, or like snooping around some evil henchmen’s warehouse lair safe?”
Before he could reply, I stabbed the elevator button again. The doors slid open, and I stepped inside.
He hesitated and then strode in after me. “Fine, but if this hotel gets knocked down in an earthquake, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You warned me. I am so warned.” I scanned the sign above the number pad. “The first floor is a restaurant and lobby. Second and up are guest levels.”
