Starry Knight

by Nina Mason

  Callum’s story of the tortures he suffered in Avalon rose from her memory, giving her gooseflesh. “And you think her a vampire? Because of the blood in the teacups?”

  “Could be,” Beau said with a shrug. “Or maybe she was just a psycho who believed drinking blood was the secret to eternal youth, like that Hungarian countess.”

  He meant Elizabeth Bathory, who murdered hundreds of virgins for their blood, which she bathed in and drank to maintain her youthful appearance.

  They walked half a block or so before he stopped outside a two-story structure with a wrought-iron balcony and shuttered doors. A sign hanging at street level, underneath the second-story terrace, read The Coffee Pot.

  “Back in Victorian times,” Beau began, trying to sound ominous, “this was the home and office of Etienne Deschamps. The elderly physician, known around town as ‘the magnetic doctor,’ was a hypnotist and a magician of sorts.

  “Shortly after befriending the Dietz family, he became enchanted, almost obsessed, with their twelve-year-old daughter, Juliette. Over time, he gained her trust and she allowed him to use her for some of his psychic tricks. One day, he took her to his home, where he chloroformed her, and, according to newspaper accounts of the day, ‘debauched her in a fiendish manner.’ By the time the police arrived, it was too late. Juliette’s nude corpse lay on the bed. The old man, standing over the body, stark naked, began slashing himself with a knife. He was arrested and eventually executed for the murder.”

  Vanessa looked at him thoughtfully. “Can you execute a vampire?”

  “There are lots of different kinds of vampires,” he returned, looking serious. “Personally, I think Deschamps was a psychic vampire who didn’t mean to kill the girl, which explains his attempt to commit suicide over her body.”

  Beau guided her across the square, around the corner, and down Bourbon Street to a less touristy end of the Quarter, before stopping before a building with rickety shutters and peeling stucco. The sign read Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop.

  The bar was small, close, and sparsely furnished. The only light was provided by flickering candles and a central fireplace, lending the place both authenticity and mystique.

  “No electricity?” she asked.

  Beau chuckled and guided her to a corner table, away from the heat of the fire. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Anything with cherries,” he said, grinning. “They’re soaked in pure Everclear.”

  “As tempting as that sounds, can I get a glass of whisky?”

  “Coming right up.”

  While waiting for Beau to return from the bar, Vanessa looked around at the flickering shadows, glad to see there weren’t many other patrons in the bar. She felt rough enough without having to fight the suffocating smell of human blood.

  A few minutes later, Beau came back to the table and set down her whisky, along with a glass filled with cherries.

  “Tying one on?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow in his direction.

  “Why not?”

  They sat in silence for several minutes before he said, “You see spirits, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes,” she confirmed. “If they want me to see them.”

  “Do they talk to you?”

  “Some do, but mostly they just show me things.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Mostly things that mean something to the people they’ve left behind,” she began to explain, “so they’ll know they’re there, watching over them. The last ghost I met showed me a tarot card—the Knight of Wands—and said the Scot I haven’t heard from is my one true love.”

  “Who was the ghost?”

  “A woman haunting his castle.”

  She’d better tread carefully here lest she arouse his suspicions.

  “Your Scot lives in a haunted castle?”

  “He does.”

  “And do you think the ghost spoke the truth?”

  She averted her gaze. “I might if I still believed in such romantic nonsense.”

  “But you don’t?”’

  “Not really.” Shrugging, she looked at him. “Not that I’d mind being wrong.”

  Chapter 16

  Standing before the hotel room’s mirrored wardrobe, Callum straightened his tie and combed his fingers through his freshly shorn hair. The conservative style made him look like a Tory wanker, but that was the least of his worries. Topping the list was Vanessa, who still hadn’t called, and the knot in his gut over what he was about to do.

  He’d done everything he knew how—weighed the pros and cons, sought the advice of trusted friends, even consulted the planets and stars—so why did his gut feel like he’d swallowed a bloody cannonball?

  The tarot card he’d found on the floor that morning at Barrogill didn’t help matters any. The Tower, which showed a man and a woman falling headlong from a castle keep just as a bolt of lightning blew it apart, signified explosive upheaval.

  He’d found other random cards around the castle over the years, but always assumed one of the maids had either dropped them accidentally or, for some unknown reason, wanted to mess with his head. Now he suspected Sorcha might be the source of the cards. But to what aim?

  A rap at the door startled him out of his contemplations. It was time. There was no turning back now. He just wished to hell Vanessa could be there to share the moment with him, since she wanted this for him even more than he’d wanted it for himself.

  Taking a deep, bracing breath, he grabbed his suit coat off the back of the chair and pulled it on as he crossed the room. On the other side of the door, he found Duncan, as expected, wearing his usual jolly expression.

  “It’s show time. Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

  Callum followed his friend down the hall and into the stairwell, which rumbled as the two of them bounded down the metal steps. Duncan led the way into the hotel’s teeming ballroom. Callum looked around, stunned by the turnout. While he’d known Duncan and the party were busy drumming up support, he hadn’t expected anything of this magnitude.

  Lord Bentley sauntered up to him with a small entourage, which included Walter Mackintosh. There were introductions and handshakes all around, but the candidate felt too keyed up to register any names.

  At the front of the room a dais held three chairs, a lectern, and a trio of flags—the UK’s, Scotland’s, and the European Union’s. Duncan led Callum to the platform, where both took their seats. Campaign posters lined the salmon-colored walls. His smiling face, bigger than life, beside the slogan: “Cast Your Vote for the Rampant Lyon of Caithness.”

  At the moment, Callum felt anything but rampant.

  Lord Bentley stepped behind the lectern, tapped the microphone, and cleared his throat. His introduction was succinct and, as he finished, the candidate got to his feet and went to stand beside the party leader. When his turn came, Callum wrapped his sweaty hands around the edges of the lectern and gazed out across the sea of unfamiliar faces.

  “I want what the voters of Caithness want,” he began, the microphone amplifying his deep burr. “As your elected representative, I believe it’s my duty to represent the interests of the people, guided by my own principles, not my personal interests or the interests of my party. As Winston Churchill once expressed, ‘Some men change their party for the sake of their principles, others, their principles for the sake of their party.’ I believe in compromise, though not when it comes to my principles or what’s best for my constituents. I want to be of service to this community and to Scotland. These are my only goals in seeking this seat. I may live in a castle, but, I assure you, I am a man of the people.”

  He went on in a similar vein for another five minutes. As soon as he finished speaking, the crowd sprang to its feet amidst thunderous applause. Heartened by the response, Callum stepped off the podium, shook what seemed like hundreds of hands, and smiled until his
face hurt.

  His heart ached, too. He’d set her free and she hadn’t come back, telling him she’d never been his to begin with.

  * * * *

  As Beau pulled up outside Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, Vanessa surveyed the dilapidated facade with a wary eye. The peeling clapboards, lopsided shutters, splintered front porch, and exposed electrical wires did little to inspire confidence.

  The interior wasn’t much better. Small and cramped, it reeked of cloying incense and was jammed to the rafters with a Hoodoo Voodoo hodgepodge. Masks, candles, statues, jewelry, wax figures, skulls, herbs, and little bowls filled with all sorts of weird and creepy whatnots.

  Vanessa took a minute to look around at the overwhelming inventory before heading to the glass counter supporting the circular gris-gris display. She turned the rack and fondled a few of the hanging pouches as she read their tags. The one designed to attract love felt gritty, the one to draw money was lumpy, and the one for protection against evil spirits contained tiny brittle bones.

  “How do I choose?” she asked Beau, who’d followed her over.

  He’d brought her here to select a talisman of her own and to have her tarot cards read.

  “You don’t want to make the same mistake I did,” he’d said before confessing his marriage was not the bed of roses he’d led her to believe. And speaking of unhappy unions, her father had called to let her know Callum was announcing his candidacy today. God, how she wished she could be there to offer encouragement—not that he needed or wanted her support, it would seem.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  The question brought Vanessa back to the counter, where a woman with golden dreadlocks and a toffee complexion waited to be of service.

  “I hope so,” Vanessa said. “I need a love charm of sorts. Something to attract the right sort of person while discouraging the wrong sort. Do you have anything like that?”

  The woman smiled. “I can always make you up something special.”

  Uh-oh. That sounded expensive and like more trouble than she wanted to go to. She really just wanted Callum to call her, but didn’t want to say so and sound pathetic—especially in front of Beau.

  “Let me think about it, all right?”

  “Sure, hon,” the clerk said. “Look around and if you need help with anything, just give me a shout.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  As Vanessa leaned down to have a closer look at what appeared to be a black bird’s foot clutching a polished red rock, Beau said to the departing clerk, “She also wanted to get a tarot reading while we’re here. Is Reed around today?”

  “Yeah,” the woman said. “He’s in the back.”

  After the woman left them, Vanessa nudged Beau and pointed at the queer object that both fascinated and reviled. “What is that thing?”

  “A squab’s foot holding a bloodstone,” he said like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Bloodstones have many magical properties. One of them is to help us become more knowledgeable in the ways of the world.”

  “What do you do with it? Wear it?”

  “Or keep it in your pocket.” Beau shot a glance toward the back of the shop. “Are you ready for your reading? If Reed’s free, we should probably nab him. You can look around for a charm after. In fact, the reading might help you decided what sort of gris-gris would do you the most good.”

  She followed Beau down a narrow aisle and through a curtain bearing a life-sized image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Or was it Our Lady of Prompt Succor?

  The room behind the curtain was outfitted with arty Day of the Dead, Santeria, and Voodoo altars. A round wooden table with chairs on either side occupied the center. A square black cloth with a gold pentagram covered the table. A deck of tarot cards rested upon the pentagram.

  A frail-looking man with a shaved head and thick glasses stepped toward them. “Welcome to the inner sanctum. How can I be of service?”

  “I’d like a reading, please,” Vanessa told him.

  “For the two of you?”

  “No,” she replied, glancing at Beau. “Just me. We’re not a couple.”

  “I see,” the man said, motioning for her to take the nearer chair. “I’m Reed. And you are…?”

  “Vanessa.”

  “I’ll wait outside,” Beau said just before disappearing through the curtain.

  Good. She wanted privacy, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings by asking him to leave.

  Reed took the seat across and got a pained look on his face. “Have you lost someone close to you recently?”

  “Not that I know of,” Vanessa replied, suddenly concerned. “Why?”

  “I feel ectoplasmic energy around you. A soul who’s passed out of its corporeal form, but remains trapped on this plane. It almost feels like she’s watching over you.”

  “She?” Vanessa tried to think who the soul might be. It couldn’t be Sorcha, surely. “It could be my grandmother. We shared the gift of seeing spirits.”

  “Is that so? Well, perhaps it is, then.” He picked up the cards. “Now, what advice do you seek from the tarot today?”

  Vanessa bit her lip as she tried to think how to put what she wanted into words. “I’m in a relationship—well, I think I am. Hope I am, but I’m not sure.” She laughed nervously. “As you can probably tell by my verbal stumbling. I’d like to know how to act. Whether I should go on waiting for him to make a move or take action myself. Can the cards advise me about something like that?”

  “I believe so,” Reed said. “I suggest we use the two-questions spread for your query.”

  Vanessa drew her brows together in confusion as she regarded the medium. “How does that work?”

  “It’s a simple and direct five-card spread,” he explained, “which lays out the pluses and minuses of two choices.”

  “Oh, okay.” Vanessa set her hands flat on the table and leaned forward, eager to get started. “My choices, I guess would be to call Callum right away or to continue waiting for him to get in touch.”

  “Very good,” Reed said with a slight smile. “Those are the choices I want you to hold in your mind while you shuffle the cards. As you handle them, try to feel your thoughts and energy surrounding the situation infusing the cards.”

  He picked up the cards and set them in front of her. With trembling hands, she shuffled repeatedly while repeating her questions as if plucking daisy petals.

  Call Callum. Don’t call Callum.

  Feeling the cards were sufficiently steeped in her vibration, she set the deck before Reed, who proceeded to lay out five cards, face down. As he overturned the first card, he said, “This card offers an overview of the situation.”

  Vanessa held her breath as she studied the image of a grieving figure in a long black cloak. He appeared to be weeping over the three spilled cups before him. Two more cups, still upright, were behind him.

  The Five of Cups.

  “You’ve been disappointed in your past love relationships, which overlays your feelings and choices about this one.” Lifting his gaze to hers, he asked, “Does that make sense to you?”

  It did. Perfect sense. The men she’d dated in the past made her feel like an objective, not a person. Callum didn’t, but the distrust was still there, making her question his intentions.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Reed replied. “This next card represents the positives surrounding your first choice, which is to call your lover.”

  The card he overturned showed a silhouetted man gazing upon seven cups floating on a cloud. Each cup contained treasures a person might wish for—riches, a castle, beauty, sex, immortality, and victory.

  “More cups,” she observed with growing apprehension.

  “Yes,” Reed said, peering down at the card. “Which makes sense given the nature of your inquiry. Cups are the suit governing the emotions.”

  Chewing her lip, Vanessa studied the card’s puzzling imagery before lift
ing her gaze to the medium’s. “What does it mean?”

  “Normally, it suggests the querent is overthinking a situation or daydreaming about the future,” he told her, tapping the card with his index finger. “But in this case, given its position as the positives surrounding the choice, I interpret it to mean your first choice offers the potential to get you everything you’ve ever dreamed of.”

  “Really? Wow.”

  The fluttering in her belly felt like a butterfly trapped in a spider’s web. As much as she longed to reach out to Callum, she also didn’t want to step on his male ego and risk putting him off her.

  The next card—representing the negatives of the first choice—was The Chariot. The image depicted a beautiful, golden-haired man driving a chariot pulled by two sphinxes, one black and one white. The canopy of the chariot was covered in stars and the man wore a crown ornamented with a star. In the background were an ancient city and two castles surrounded by walls.

  “That’s Callum,” she blurted, astonished by the likeness. “It has to be. The golden hair, the stars. Did I happen to mention he’s an astrologer?”

  “I don’t believe you did,” the medium said with a small smile, “nor do I think your interpretation is wrong. The cards can sometimes be uncannily literal.” Touching the card, he added, “The Chariot speaks of quests and the blending of opposites—denoted by the black and white sphinxes—and the choice between emotional desires and worldly ambitions. Is that an issue in this instance?”

  She swallowed her surprise at the card’s pinpoint accuracy. “Yes, unfortunately.”

  Reed smiled at her for a couple of heartbeats before saying, “Well, nothing worth having comes easily, does it? With regards to your first choice—to take the initiative and contact this man, whom you obviously care for enough to be torn about the decision—the cards suggest you could get everything your heart desires, but at the expense of your professional ambitions.”

  “Yes, that does seem to be the crux of the matter,” Vanessa admitted with a sigh. “He thinks pleasing him should be my only ambition.”

  Reed blinked a few times as he looked into her face. “Do you enjoy pleasing him?”