by E. A. Copen
Nate gave me a pleading look in the mirror. “There is a nicer one off Pirate Alley I’ve heard of. Maybe try there.”
Leah shot him a look but quickly brought her eyes back to the road.
A short while later, the Frieder’s car pulled up in front of a run-down, rickety bar of two stories. The burned-out neon on the sign announced the place was simply called Paula’s, named for my surly fae landlady. Some wooden stairs stacked up the side of the building, leading to a private entrance on the upper floor. My apartment.
I thanked Leah, got out, and collected my stuff from the trunk before running up the stairs. It was unseasonably warm out—even for the South in May—but I was still chilled to the bone without several layers of clothing on. Hazard of being the Pale Horseman, I guess, the low body temperature. By the time I juggled my clothes, the urn, and my key to get the door open, I was half-frozen.
My apartment on the other side wasn’t as much of a wreck as usual. I hadn’t been home to wreck it other than to shower, eat, and pass out asleep. But not being home also meant I didn’t have any food in the fridge, or any clean laundry. After a frantic search for clean-ish clothes, a hot shower, and a handful of peanuts of questionable age I’d stolen from the bar some time ago, I grabbed my phone and called Mrs. Lawrence to arrange a time to wrap things up that evening.
I’d just hung up when my cell vibrated, and The Clash told me about how they’d fought the law, and the law won. Detective Emma Knight’s work phone ringtone. There was only one reason why she’d be calling me from that number. I occasionally worked as a consultant for the police. The pay wasn’t that great, and I usually got shot at or stabbed in the course of the work, but Emma and I were friends. I felt like I owed her.
I answered. “Ghostbusters. Whaddaya want?”
“A day off,” Emma replied without hesitation. “But that’s not going to happen. Got a couple of stiffs here you might like to see.”
“Why Emma, I didn’t know you felt that way.”
I could feel her roll her eyes from miles away. “Ha. Very funny. Remember that body we found in the shallow grave in Jackson Square last month?”
Boy, did I. The ghouls had told me about it, saying it was too wrong to eat. For a ghoul not to be interested in a free meal, it had to be something really bad. When the cops found the body, it’d been an eleven-year-old boy with no obvious cause of death. According to the autopsy, it just looked like he’d given up. They couldn’t find any one reason for him to be dead. While the coroner called it a medical mystery, I knew the kid wasn’t the first to die like that. A decade ago, I’d lost my kid sister to the same strange wasting disease.
Except it wasn’t a wasting disease. I had it on good authority that something called an Archon was responsible, though I hadn’t been able to find much on Archons since then.
“Uh-huh,” I said into the phone and popped open the fridge. Empty. Dammit.
“Well, we found some remains in the same place last week.” She paused to take a breath, as if the next thing she was about to say unnerved her enough to warrant it. Emma was a tough cop, one of the best. If it unnerved her… “There was nothing left but bones. Child bones. Lots of them. I just got the coroner’s report back. Turns out there are remains from six different children, some of which date back a few years. The most recent one could’ve just been days ago. The only thing we’ve got are bite marks, and the bite patterns don’t match anything human or animal on record. Do you know what that means?”
I shivered. “You’ve got a supernatural serial killer.”
“When can you get here?”
I closed the fridge and grabbed my keys from the dish on the edge of the counter. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter Two
As a homicide detective, the New Orleans morgue was Emma’s second home, and quickly growing to be one of my most frequent haunts as well. I knew more cops and coroners by first name than I knew in the whole rest of the city. That didn’t mean I liked going there. The place still gave me the creeps, no matter what time of day I showed up.
Arriving at midday didn’t lessen that feeling. The sun was high, casting short shadows that I avoided as I made my way up the walk and into the building. It hadn’t been that long since I’d watched shadows rip apart five police officers in body armor outside the building.
Inside, the only sign that it was day instead of night came when I glanced through the few available windows. Everything from the walls to the floor was the same shade of off-white.
Once I made it past the metal detectors in the lobby, I stopped in front of the elevator and jammed a thumb into the up arrow. While most actual autopsies were performed downstairs with easier access to drains (a thought which made my stomach clench), the cold storage was upstairs. I figured that’s where they’d be keeping a couple of trays of bones.
The gamble turned out to be right when I rode the elevator car up and the doors opened on the tired figure of Detective Moses Moses, Emma’s partner. If he hadn’t shot me the first time we met, I would’ve described Moses as the most grandfatherly-type black man you’d ever meet. Curly, close-cropped black hair tinged with silver peeked out from under a worn fedora. He wore brown suits, sweater vests, or otherwise old-school casual comfort styles, but always with those brown spectator shoes. With his casual demeanor and bum knee, you’d think he was the least threatening cop on the street. And you’d be dead wrong. Moses’ strength might not have been chasing down killers, but he had a keen eye, a deep understanding of people, and a big heart.
I nodded to him as I stepped off the elevator. “Moses. Good timing.”
“Nothin’ to it,” he replied with a shrug. “How you been?”
“Can’t complain. You? How’s the old ticker?”
He rubbed his chest and fell into step beside me. “Doc wants me to lay off the hamburgers. Told my grand-niece who’s staying with me. You know, she’s from Los Angeles? Smart girl, that one. But they got these hamburgers in Cali made out of kale instead of meat. Kale, Lazarus. I’m so desperate for a proper hamburger, that alone might give me a heart attack. Know what I’m saying?”
I nodded. “Why don’t you just hit a drive-thru on the way home?”
“I said a proper hamburger. The crap they fry in most burger joints ain’t never been part of any real food chain.”
He pushed through the double doors that led into the viewing room, and we found Emma pacing back and forth. She stopped when we stepped into the room, the air around her buzzing with anxiety. This case had her really worked up. I could see it on her face. That was Emma’s biggest fault, her tendency to take every case personally. It drove her to succeed, sure, but it was a literal weight on her soul, one I’d seen with my own eyes. Unlike Moses, when Emma was working she was totally absorbed in the work, unable or unwilling to focus on anything else. It was likely she’d been pacing, complaining about how long it’d taken us to get there.
“Finally.” She put her hands on her hips, the movement pulling apart the navy jacket where she’d left it unbuttoned over her chest so that her shoulder holsters were visible. “Do you think you can raise a shade from just bones?”
I frowned. Raising a shade wasn’t easy, and I’d been doing it for the cops quite a lot lately, Emma specifically. She could’ve mentioned that’s what she wanted me for over the phone. “You know, I can’t help but feel a little used when that’s the first thing you say to me, Emma.”
She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. It feels like we just talked. I figured it would save everyone time and trouble to just cut to the chase.”
“Depends,” I said. “About the shade. I’ve never tried to do it with just bones. And besides, even if I do, you’re usually the first one to point out that nothing a shade says or does is admissible in court. If you don’t have any other leads, this might not be the best place to start. Why don’t you just tell me everything you know?”
Emma stepped to the side, and for the first time, I saw she was stan
ding in front of a big table on wheels. This table was larger than the standard body bag bearing gurney and held several body bags, none of which looked like they carried a body.
I cracked my outer shields the tiniest bit to see what I could sense. As we were in the morgue, I immediately felt the pull of death, but not from the body bags. There were more bodies in the next room, fresher, more willing to return and tell their stories. From where I stood, I felt nothing at all coming from the bags on the table. I stepped closer and passed a hand over one of the closed bags.
“I’m only getting a faint sense from these,” I said, shaking my head. “Doubt I’d be able to raise a shade, but there is something else I could try. Something that doesn’t require me to pull anything from the other side. But you will have to let me touch the bones.”
I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of handing human bones and trying psychometry. First of all, I wasn’t the best at it. My old mentor, Pony Dee, had been a specialist when it came to that and seeing the future. I’d tried to learn but counted it a rudimentary skill at best. The most I would be able to glean from the bones would be thoughts and feelings, maybe a single vision if there was a particularly strong memory associated with that bone. Unless they break them, however, most kids don’t even remember they have bones.
Second, I’d have to touch human remains. Ick. Necromancer or not, the thought sent shivers down my spine.
But Emma nodded, reached down, and unzipped the body bag closest to her. I swallowed my fear and reached into the bag. I’d expected to find an arranged skeleton, maybe with a few bits missing. Definitely not the jumbled pile of sharpened bone that greeted me. My fingers slid over a jagged point and back toward a smooth edge where the bone ended.
I grabbed the knobby end and lifted out the bone. Without a medical degree, I couldn’t tell for sure where the bone belonged in the body, but I guessed it was an upper arm or leg bone considering it was relatively thick and ended in what looked to have once been a joint. Turning it over in my hands, I studied the part of the bone where it had been broken off. The break was uneven and didn’t look smooth in any sense of the word.
“They weren’t cut by machine,” Emma said and pointed to some grooves I hadn’t noticed. “Bite marks. We think something broke the bones open and…removed the marrow.”
I was pretty sure “removed” meant “ate” in this case. Either way, that particular bone wasn’t going to be useful, so I put it back and opened the bag wider. Two tiny skulls without their attached lower jaws stared back at me. I picked up the closest one.
Girl, my senses screamed. Ten. Caucasian. I tightened my shields before the skull could relay more information unbidden. “This one. Do you know anything about this one?” I held the skull out to Emma.
She picked up the white tag dangling from a rubber band that had been placed around the skull. “Nothing off hand. When the remains were found, they were all jumbled. D.J. and his staff have been working pretty much around the clock to try and identify them. Doing that means destroying parts of the remains to look at bone composition, then lying out the skeletons and trying to see what’s here and what’s missing. It’s a guessing game, and we’re just scraping the surface of getting started. I know they’re trying to run dental matches too, but with kids, it’s a shot in the dark.”
I brought the skull closer and ran a finger over the top where some of the bones still hadn’t fused together. “I can tell you she was white. Ten years old.” I closed my eyes and cracked my shields again, reaching further, focusing on the skull in my hands.
Darkness. Alone. Tears. Bare feet scrape against raw, wet cement. It’s not wet in the sense that it’s new. No, it’s old and smells earthy. Wet with mud and blood, which is what everything smells like where I am.
A door opens. My heart pounds at the light. Someone’s coming. But no, it’s not mama or papa. It’s the bad man who’s all skin and bones and smells like death. I try to curl up, to stay in the darkness where he can’t find me, but I can hear him sniffing. Hear the big globs of hungry drool. The icy hands of death reach out and grab my leg. Red lights in the darkness. Eyes.
The skull crashed to the table as it rolled from my fingers and I caught myself on the table, a scream stuck in my throat that hadn’t yet blossomed. It wasn’t mine. She’d never gotten the chance to scream either.
Moses’ hand came down on my back, comforting. “Take a breath, man. You want some water?”
“No, thanks.” Like Moses, I could’ve killed for a hamburger when I came in. Now, my stomach was all in knots. “They were holding her somewhere, somewhere underground maybe. It was dark and smelled like mud. She was the only one there, which means there’s either more than one holding cell, or they’re only taking them one at a time.”
“They?” Emma’s voice was hopeful.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I don’t know how many. I got a distinct feeling there was more than one, but she was only sure of one. She only saw the one.”
Sniffing. Hungry drool. A monster of all skin and bones. That meant something to me, but wouldn’t be of any use to Emma. I knew of a particular monster that frequented underground, earthy pits, looked half-starved, smelled of death, and sported red eyes. They also ate just about anything, including the dead. Ghouls. But a ghoul had led me to the first body months ago, and that one hadn’t been eaten, just emaciated. Still, there had to be a connection, and I could check it out, but not tonight. It was too close to dusk, and after sundown was when corpse devouring beasties were at their strongest.
Emma’s shoulders slumped. “Damn, I really thought we had something.”
“I can confirm one thing. The thing responsible isn’t human. I think you’ve got a ghoul problem.”
“Ghoul?” Moses asked. “Those are real?”
I nodded. “Mostly harmless, honestly. They’re like goats and will eat anything, even metal plates. But they usually prefer prey that won’t fight back. Scavengers. They eat the dead, hate the light, and live as creatures of habit and instinct. I’ve heard of feral ghouls going for the living, but most don’t. They’re too close to human in most cases. They might be monsters, but most still have a shred of empathy. Besides, victim number one wasn’t eaten.”
“Victim number one?” The zipper on the body bag growled as Emma closed it. “You mean the boy we found a few weeks ago. I’m not sure he’s connected. Other than being buried in the same place, there’s nothing to suggest he is.”
“Jackson Square a popular place for dumping bodies?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Good point.”
I glanced at my watch. In less than an hour, I was supposed to meet my client and deliver the urn, which meant I now had to forgo the nap I so desperately wanted before I met with Beth if I wanted to hit the pawn shop. Guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Just hope some necromancer doesn’t come by and ruin it for me.
“Late for something?” Emma crossed her arms and raised an expectant eyebrow.
“Look, I’d love to hang out around dead bodies all day and shoot the breeze, but I do sort of have a life. There’s not much more I can give you. As far as I can tell, the rest of these bones are either too old or too incomplete to get much more than an impression from. Maybe if you put this little girl back together, I could try to raise a shade, but I honestly doubt there’s enough material here.”
Emma started to say something else.
I raised a hand to stop her. “I’ll look into the ghoul angle tomorrow. If that’s what’s going on, should be pretty simple to shut down. And I’ll call you if I need backup. Promise.” I drew a hand in a big X over my chest. “Cross my heart and hope not to die.”
She nodded and adjusted the body bag the way it’d been when I entered. “In the meantime, we’ll focus on identifying the remains and cross-referencing different missing persons reports. It’s a long shot, but at the very least, I’d like to notify the families and establish a pattern of behavior for our killer, just in case your angle doesn’t turn up anything.
”
“All work and no play makes Emma a dull girl.”
The glare she shot me would’ve made a smarter man flinch. “Dull, am I? Well, just so you know, I too have a life outside my job. It just so happens it doesn’t include you.”
“Come on, Emma. I’ve seen your house. Tending roses doesn’t count. You’re going to work yourself to death.”
She stepped away from the body bags, adjusted her collar, and slid the strap of a purse over her shoulder. “Then people need to stop killing each other in my city. What I wouldn’t give for just one day where a new case doesn’t land on my desk.”
I held the door for her and cast a look back at the bones on the table, trying to forget how alone and afraid the little girl had been. “Wouldn’t we all?”
Chapter Three
On the uptown side of the St. Louis Cathedral, situated on the edge of Jackson Square, lies a narrow street with a hundred legends: Pirates Alley.
Some say this alley was the legendary meeting place of the notorious Jean Lafitte and Andrew Jackson. Jackson had come to the pirate brothers in a last-ditch effort to defend the city from the encroaching British Armada late in the War of 1812. After the American navy was decimated in a previous battle, and with the powerful warships already looming in the Gulf of Mexico, Jackson went under cover of darkness on a foggy night in late 1814 to parlay with a pirate. The proposition? That Jean Lafitte commit his ships to defending the city in exchange for Jackson arranging to free Jean’s brother, Pierre, from prison.
While the story has an edge of truth, it’s unlikely the street now known as Pirates Alley was the meeting place either of them chose, or that it went down that way. Still, the legend lived on, evidenced by the many pirate-themed shops and bars just off the street.
The only pawn shop was a small, hole-in-the-wall type place that was easily missed if you weren’t looking for it. A wooden, hand-painted sign hung outside a weather-beaten door that read: Pirates’ Booty Pawn. The sign on the door said they were open for another hour, more than enough time for me to get Nate’s stuff back before I had to go meet Beth.
