by E. A. Copen
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kerrigan,” said the old lady, picking up the dog. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s normally very friendly.”
“Well, I’m glad you have him to alert you if someone suspicious shows up. World’s a rough place these days.”
“Oh, I have my son for that, dearie. He’s been taking such good care of me and Tinkles since I lost my house. Did you find Daniel’s urn? The one with the Easter lilies on it? Daniel really loved those, you know. Easter lilies.” She put the dog down and let it scamper into the house.
“Yes, I did.” I held the urn out to her. When she reached in the wrong direction, I moved the urn toward her hand and made sure she had a good grip on it before I let go. Normally, I’d insist on getting my fee first, but Mrs. Lawrence was just such a sweet little old lady that it was hard to say no.
A big smile spread across her face, ironing out some wrinkles and deepening the ones around her mouth. Her clouded eyes twinkled, the hard lines of the old woman softening. “Thank you, Mr. Kerrigan. You have no idea what this means to me.”
“It was nothing. Really. Didn’t take long once we got a proper sample for the tracking spell.”
But she wasn’t ready to let it go. A lone tear traced a deep wrinkle on the side of her face until she wiped it away. “After the hurricane destroyed the house, I lost everything. I was so sure I’d never see him in this life again. Yet here we are, reunited. I feel like…” She chuckled, despite the tear. “I feel like I could dance for the first time in years.”
I smiled just a little to myself. “Glad I could help.”
“Oh, but you’re wanting your fee. Hold on, dearie. Stay right here. Just let me get my pocketbook.” The screen door creaked as she pulled it open and stepped up into the house, retreating into the next room only to return a moment later, holding a check out to me. “Here you are, Mr. Kerrigan.”
I closed two fingers around the check and started to thank her, but caught myself as I looked down at the total she’d written. “Mrs. Lawrence, I think you’ve made a mistake here. This check is for more than you owe me. A lot more.”
“Nonsense, dear. I owe you every penny and more. Now, you take it.” She shoved it back at me.
I felt like dirt, taking even my normal fee from a little old lady, so I kept trying to talk her down until she wagged a finger at me and said, “I’m old, well past the age where I learned I can’t be buried with the zeroes in my bank account. Now, you’ve done something for me I thought was impossible. You gave me back my heart when everyone else had given up. You’re a good boy, Mr. Kerrigan. You’ve earned this, and I won’t hear any different.”
Seeing as she wouldn’t take no for an answer, I had no choice but to take the check.
I said goodbye to Mrs. Lawrence after making sure she had my card in case she had more questions and walked back to the car. The windshield was in place, and there was no damage to the interior, so it seemed like it was okay to drive once I swept the glass out of the driver’s seat. I’d just have to vacuum it all up later. A quick check of my watch told me I had enough time, but only if traffic was on my side, and only if I showed up fashionably late. Beth would understand.
I pulled out my phone and opened my messenger app to let her know I was going to be late. The app didn’t show she’d seen my last message or even the last few before that, but I wasn’t worried about it. She’d been on a plane, so maybe she’d just turned her phone off and fallen asleep. Be there late, I texted, and then added, I’ve got a surprise that will make up for it.
The seat jingled when I sat in it, so I got back up and swept more glass out of the car with my hand and got back in.
Jean appeared beside me when I pulled onto the next street. “Well, that was exciting. You are an interesting fellow.”
“Is that why you’re haunting me? I’m interesting?” I made a hard turn down another street. “Well I hate to break it to you, but I’m actually pretty boring. Most days I just sit around in my boxers, drinking beer and playing video games.”
“Beer and games,” Jean scoffed. “Juvenile.”
“I’m a ten-year-old in a twenty-nine-year old’s body. What can I say?”
He snorted as if it were the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
I gave him a sideways glance. For a ghost, he was pretty odd. Jean Lafitte (if he was, indeed, the infamous pirate hero) had been dead for almost two hundred years, and normally ghosts didn’t hang around that long. It took a lot of willpower to keep them in the world for any amount of time, meaning he had to have an iron will.
Ghosts aren’t as common as most television shows would have you believe. To create one, it takes a shockingly traumatic event at or near the time of death, and for the soul to be left intact. They also had to have a reason to want to hang out after death, which few people did. As a necromancer, I could force people to become ghosts if I got to them before their soul went to the After and performed a specific ritual, but I wasn’t interested in doing that. For my purposes, shades were more useful, and those didn’t require a soul. Only the memory of one.
It was possible another necromancer had bound Jean’s soul to something. When you hear stories about the dead being cursed to walk the Earth forever, this is usually what’s happened. Some necromancer had a beef with the dead guy and bound his soul to an object. To free a ghost bound to an object, the best course of action was to destroy said object. Maybe he was attached to one of Nate’s items. After all, Nate was a complete normal. He wouldn’t know anything about magic if we hadn’t met.
“So you said you had a long story?”
Jean straightened, rolling back his shoulders. “As I said, my story is long but exciting one. In 1807, the United States passed the Embargo Act—”
“I know you were a pirate and all about the Battle of New Orleans. Everybody knows that.”
“Privateer,” Jean said with an air of offense. “The charges of piracy were dropped.”
I sighed and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Just get to the part about why you’re a ghost and why you’re bothering me.”
“In addition to being a privateer and savior of the city of New Orleans, my brothers and I took it upon ourselves to hunt down monsters wherever we found them and end their lives.”
I eyed the ghost beside me. No matter how much he annoyed me, and how much I wanted to dislike him, if that was true, it was pretty cool. My brain conjured up images of pirates battling ghosts and undead krakens, and I shook them away. He might tell a good story, but I knew better. Hunting the supernatural was rarely as glamorous as it sounded.
“We hunted everything,” he said with a sparkle in his eye. “Vampires, loup-garou, witches, even the occasional ghost or mermaid. At times, it was on commission for the United States government, but most of the time it was purely for the thrill of the hunt. There was nothing I couldn’t kill, no monster who could outsmart my half-brother Dominique, and no creature who could withstand Pierre’s charm. That was, until one fateful afternoon in the summer of 1823. We had heard of a cursed ship sailing the waters of the Gulf and so set out to find her. This ship, all her crew had died of starvation at sea according to the lone survivor.”
“Probably not that uncommon,” I said with a shrug. “I imagine ships got lost or marooned all the time.”
“Perhaps, but the Fortuna’s crew had only sailed from port three days prior with a full stock bound for Havana. Now, you tell me, sir, if you have ever known a man to starve in three days’ time?”
“Point taken.” I turned onto the next street where a car wash waited two lights away. Unfortunately, I was stuck at a red light.
“We found the Fortuna,” Jean continued, “and her crew. At least, we assumed the bloody bones stacked in the hold belonged to the crew. The goods were untouched, I might add. This was no robbery. And what could make a man decay to naught but bones and scraps of meat in a few days? My crew had the unfortunate chance to find out.
“It came from nowhere
, the great surge of power that capsized the Fortuna and then ripped it in half.” He clenched a fist to dramatize his story. “Pierre was cast into the icy waters. I never saw him alive again. My half-brother Dominique and I held to the wall with all our might as a sudden storm seemed to jerk us back and forth violently. Then, just as suddenly as it began, everything stopped. The choppy waters stilled. The boat righted itself. Dominique and I looked at each other, bewildered. I’ll never forget the look on his face. Then they appeared.”
“Who?” I’d pulled into the car wash, which was deserted, but sat, fascinated by the ghost’s tale.
Jean waved vaguely with both hands. “They were the tallest men I had ever seen, literal giants. Their skin held an eerie, ethereal glow so that, at first, I took them for ghosts of the dead sailors. Though their clothing didn’t match. It was as if they had come from another time and place altogether. We gazed upon them in awe but for a moment before the unthinkable happened. The monsters jumped into us, and the next thing I knew I was as you see me today.” He gestured to himself with a flourish.
“Hold on a second.” I lifted a hand. “When you say he jumped into you, you don’t mean he just bumped into you, do you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It was as if my very soul was ripped from my body.”
“What happened to the body?”
“That’s the worst of it. My body got right back up without me!” Jean placed a palm against his forehead.
My gut instinct was to tell him that wasn’t possible. I’d pulled my fair share of souls out of gods, and their bodies didn’t get up afterward. In fact, their bodies tended to disintegrate. While I hadn’t ever tried that trick on a human, I had touched a human soul, and it didn’t have any good effects on the person. I’d also cannibalized a god’s soul to heal myself, which hadn’t pushed my soul out of my body. His story just didn’t add up to my experience.
Unless, of course, I was dealing with something outside of my experience, a monster I didn’t know anything about. There were some troubling parallels between Jean Lafitte’s story and the case Emma had asked me to help out with. The pile of bones, for starters. Though his hadn’t been buried in the tale, they had been placed somewhere that people weren’t likely to encounter them right away. That was also two hundred years ago. It was possible the killer had refined some of his methods over time. But what kind of monster even lived two hundred years?
“I followed my body for a time,” Jean said. “But it didn’t seem to be doing anything interesting. Just drinking, gambling and whoring as usual. I lost track of it around 1834.”
I cringed. His body had stayed alive without his soul for nine years, I wondered how long a body could last like that. If something supernatural was keeping it alive, would it eventually break down? Or was the soulless body of Jean Lafitte still out there in the world two hundred years later? The thought sent a shiver down my spine.
For the moment, however, my main focus had to be on getting the car cleaned up and getting back to the restaurant to meet Beth. Monsters, serial killers, and pirate ghosts aside, I still had a life, and I wasn’t willing to give that up. I needed to hurry if I wanted to get there before Beth decided I was a no-show.
“Still haven’t heard what you want me to do about it,” I said.
Jean looked at me, his jaw open and eyes wide. “What do I want you to do about it? You’re the first person who’s been able to see me for two hundred years! I want you to help me! Help me find my body if it’s still roaming around out there, and help me get back into it, or else help me to not be this…this…” He gestured to his ghostly form. “Whatever I am!”
I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. If I told him no, he’d probably pester me until I gave in, seeing as how I was the only one he could interact with. What choice did I have? “I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.”
“Brilliant!” He clapped his hands.
“But you’ve got to do something for me.”
All the excitement disappeared from Jean’s face.
“I can’t give you something for nothing. That’s not how this works, pal.”
“What is it you want?” He crossed his arms. “I’m a ghost. I don’t have much of anything.”
“Tomorrow morning, you’re going to tell me everything you know about the things that kicked you out of your body.” He started to speak, but I cut him off, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “And don’t you dare tell me you don’t know anything. If that’d happened to me, I’d have spent the last two hundred years learning all there was to know about the monsters who killed me.”
He wiggled his shoulders. “Well then, you’re in luck. But why wait for tomorrow? Wouldn’t it be more expedient to take care of it now?”
I got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind me. “Because tonight I’ve got a date.”
Chapter Five
Shel was situated in the heart of the Quarter inside one of the city’s ancient structures with a classy, lit-up exterior, lush greenery outside, and fancy balconies up on the second story. The spire set on one corner of the building made the place look like a castle, adding to the ambiance even for passers-by. It was a Creole place that catered to people with deep pockets or who wanted to impress someone. Too expensive to appeal to most tourists, Shel was probably the swankiest place in town.
I sat in the car for a minute, watching guys in silk suits escorting women in black dresses to the door and felt underdressed. All I’d had time to pull on was a polo and dress pants. At best, I was dressed for business casual and not for a black-tie restaurant. There were a few guys in similar clothes hanging around, hands in their pockets, fingers working over the screens of their cell phones. That was reassuring until I realized they were the valets.
“Looks like you’re a bit underdressed.” Jean smirked.
“Shut up.” I twisted to grab the necklace box I’d gotten from the pawn shop from behind the seat. Just to make sure it was still there, I opened the box and looked down into my reflection in the amber beads. Hopefully, that’d make up for being both underdressed and late. “Stay here,” I told Jean, and got out of the car.
The maître d’ looked down his nose at me when I got to the podium, but showed me to a nice, round table in a semi-secluded area of the restaurant on the upper floor. I was surprised to find Beth wasn’t there waiting on me since I was so late, but then maybe traffic was holding her up.
While I waited, I got on my phone and checked to see if she’d updated her social media or replied to any of my messages. She hadn’t done either, so I tried to call her. Her plane was scheduled to land hours ago, giving her ample time to get to the hotel, unpack, and meet me. I’d neglected to get the name of the hotel she was checking into since it hadn’t seemed important at the moment, so I couldn’t call there. I did try her cell, but all I got was voice mail.
A familiar sinking feeling settled in my gut as the hour marched on and still, Beth didn’t show. I felt like it was Friday in prison and I was the only guy whose family didn’t drive up to see him during visiting hours.
The waiter stopped by my table for the third time to see if I wanted anything besides the glass of water I’d ordered. Last time he showed up, I told him I was waiting for someone, and he gave me a sad look but scurried off. This time, I was ready to accept that Beth was a no-show and I was going to wind up eating an expensive dinner by myself. I asked for five more minutes to look over the menu. He raised an eyebrow but stepped away to tend to another customer.
“She stood you up.”
I slowly lowered the menu and narrowed my eyes at the sound of Jean’s voice. He was floating over the other chair at the table, a smug look on his face. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the car?”
“Staying in the car is boring. Watching you wallow in your own self-pity is far more entertaining.”
I sighed and raised the menu, hiding behind it. “Look, I’m already having a bad day. I’m going to pretend like you’re not here.”
“Does this happen often? You getting stood up, I mean. Sad, really. I almost feel sorry for you.”
“You know what?” I dropped the menu and stood up, putting my hands on the table to glare at Jean’s smug little mustached face.
“Lazarus?”
I twisted to find Emma Knight standing behind me. I almost didn’t recognize her since she was in a sleeveless black dress and not one of her pants suits. A sheer black shawl was draped over her shoulders and she held a silver clutch in one hand. “Emma? Didn’t expect to see you here.” I glanced behind her. “You here with someone?”
She offered a strained smile. “Just me, myself, and I. You?”
I turned back to the ghost floating in the other seat. “Guess she’d be here by now if she were planning to show.”
“Welcome to why I don’t date.”
“Tell me about it.” I gestured to the chair across from me. “Wanna sit? Or were you on your way out?”
“I was just on my way in.” She looked relieved when I invited her to sit, which seemed odd. Maybe it was the heels. I’d never seen her wear heels before. They added a good half inch to her height and looked uncomfortable. I’ll never understand how women walk in those things.
Watching her sit on top of a ghost was a little unsettling, especially since it didn’t seem to bother Jean. I tried to gesture for him to buzz off, or at least vacate the chair, but he didn’t catch my meaning.
Emma shivered and pulled her shawl closer. “Is it cold in here or is it me?”
“You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. I’m always cold.”
“Good point.”
I cleared my throat. “So, no blind dates?”
She shrugged. “Hard to meet people when you don’t date co-workers and arrest bad guys for a living. Most of the people I see every day are either dead or criminals. No offense.”
