I climbed the iron stairs to the top floor. The stairs ended on a landing in a hall between large holding cells with floor-to-ceiling iron bars along the front. Each cell was about forty by forty feet in floor space. The doors of the cells were wide enough to let two men enter side by side and had a dome on the inside at shoulder height. The dome was made of iron bars and allowed a guard to stick his head in and look into the corners of the cell at his right and left. I’d never seen such a fixture before and I was impressed by the ingenuity of the builders. The walls, floors, and ceiling were lined with iron plates to keep the inmates from digging through the stone. This place must have been hell in the winter and summer.
Another waiter—a dreadfully cheery human—unpacked bottles of wine and hard liquor from a stack of boxes along one of the walls. He set the bottles on a table.
I dumped the blocks into a galvanized steel tub beside him.
The waiter stopped working. “You have to chop that up.”
“I was only told to bring the ice. Piexotto didn’t say anything about chopping.”
He jabbed a thumb into his chest. “Well, I’m the head of the waitstaff, and I’m telling you”—he stuck his index finger at me—“to chop the ice. Okay? And then we’ll all be happy.” He cocked his head to one side—he had a rainbow tattoo on his neck—and his voice rose an octave. “Okay?”
He was a shorty in tight-fitting clothes, as if to show off his skinny arms and build. Had he worn a green costume, he’d be one of Santa’s elves—one with a piercing fetish; this guy had a dozen rings in each ear. I wanted to take that “okay” and jam it back into his mouth.
I asked, “Why not get bags of ice cubes?”
“Miss Piexotto says drinks taste better with chopped ice.”
“Where’s the ice pick?”
The waiter shrugged. “Improvise.”
I raised a middle finger and hyperextended the talon.
“Oh my,” he said, impressed. He studied the talon like he was measuring it. “What kind of a werewolf are you?”
Not only was I hired help but this goofball couldn’t even tell that I was a vampire. “The pissed-off kind.” With my teeth clenched in frustration, I pounded the ice blocks and reduced them both to a mound of shards. My finger ached from the cold.
Human helpers stood on stepladders and taped garlands of crepe paper to the ceiling and around the iron cell bars. Other helpers lay thin cable along the edges of the floor and connected the cable to speakers hanging from the walls. Someone tapped a microphone and feedback hummed through the speakers.
Mr. Head-of-the-Waitstaff stood beside the tub of ice. “About done with the pounding?”
“Whattaya think?”
“I think”—he touched his chin and rolled his eyes, then pointed to the other holding cells—“that you have more work to do. Every tub needs ice. We’re going to have a lot of thirsty guests.”
Eighteen more blocks remained below. That meant nine more trips. I didn’t want to make even one more.
I was downstairs when someone whispered.
The voice sounded spooky and female.
“Over here.”
She called from a small door waist level in the vertical shaft beside the staircase. I opened the door.
A woman who looked like she was made of smoke crawled from the opening.
I gave a quick look to my right and left, as I expected others to cry out in terror. A man carrying a roll of speaker cable passed by, oblivious to her appearance.
I was the only one who saw her. “What are you?”
“A ghost, darling. This is Charleston.”
CHAPTER 49
The ghost stepped to the floor. A bare foot stretched from under a full skirt with a large apron. Her clothing and features were in shades of gray. Wisps trailed from the edges of her body and clothes. She stood on the floor and looked as substantial as a puff of vapor.
She wore a bandanna knotted above her forehead, Aunt Jemima style. Her clothes looked backward rural. Her skirt bore patches and stitches. In her mortal life, she obviously didn’t have money, and I made the leap that she’d been a slave. I studied her face to see if I detected distinctive African features. A flat brow with sharp temples. A delicate nose that sometimes looked pointed, then softened into a round knob. Wisps of hair that curled from under her bandanna into tendrils of ethereal smoke.
What little I’d read about Charleston was that white slave masters weren’t shy about tapping into the brown sugar, so many slaves were mulatto, biracial in today’s phrasing. Hell, I’m Chicano, a cross-border transplanted descendant of the Mexicans, who didn’t exist as a people until the Spaniards shagged the native women.
But with the shades of gray, I couldn’t read her features accurately and figured if it was important, she’d tell me.
“That’s a lot of ice to carry. Try this,” she said, referring to the compartment in the shaft. “It’s a dumbwaiter.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said, “but why are you here?”
“Because this jail is haunted.”
“So it needs ghosts?” I asked.
“Not just any ghost. A haint. A boo hag.”
She appeared to be in her late twenties, and other than a complexion made of swirling smoke, she didn’t seem like a specter.
“You don’t look like a hag.”
“How about now?” Her mouth yawned and stretched open, wider, wider still, her teeth separated by lengthening gaps, her entire tongue protruding in an obscene undulating mass, until her head popped inside out.
That frightened even me.
Then her head snapped back to normal.
I said, “Does make an impression.”
She rubbed the corners of her mouth. “If you think crow’s-feet makes you look old, imagine what that does to your face.”
“Are you the only ghost here?”
“Oh no. This place has plenty of them. Levina Fisher has staked out a good spot for the party.”
“Who is Levina?” I asked.
“She was an innkeeper who drugged, robbed, and murdered her guests. They hanged her here in 1820.”
“And you are not Levina?” I asked.
“Oh my, no,” the haint answered. “I’m Deliah Joules.”
I gave her my name, then said, “You don’t talk like a ghost from the nineteenth century.”
Deliah gathered her skirt and hopped on a table right on top of a platter of hors d’oeuvres. Her butt sank over the oysters Rockefeller and meatballs with mint jelly. “Unlike the other ghosts here, I wasn’t hanged or murdered. I was killed in 1966 on this very spot. By accident.”
“How so?”
She touched a black junction box on the wall by the dumbwaiter. Her finger went through the box. “There used to be a light switch right here. I went to turn on the lights, forgetting that I was soaking wet from coming in from the rain.” She made a flick motion with her finger. “Zap. No more Deliah Joules.”
“Ouch,” I said. “You got here in 1966? What’s with the clothes?”
“We had costume parties back then. Had I known this was going to happen, I woulda worn a nicer dress.”
A ghost. “Am I the only one who can see you?”
“For now. It takes energy to make myself visible. The more visible, the more energy it takes.”
“Where does this energy come from? You eat?”
“I wish. I’d love a dish of macaroni and cheese. We get our energy from sleep. That’s why catching us is so iffy. See us today and it might be a month before we’re able to make another appearance.”
“What about a physical manifestation?”
“You mean like touching or moving something? That’s like sprinting a marathon. Need lots of energy for that.”
“Ectoplasm?”
She raised both hands in a show of disgust. “Yuck. You don’t want to know where that comes from. Definitely not my scene.”
“Is it true about you haints being afraid of water?”
She
chuffed like it was a stupid question.
I asked, “What about haint blue? That you ghosts can’t cross a threshold painted haint blue.”
“What do you think?”
“I dunno, that’s why I’m asking.”
She smiled. The ethereal smoke swirled like whirlpools around the dimples in her cheeks. “Sure, we can cross it. Just because we’re ghosts doesn’t mean we’ve gone stupid.”
“So the haint blue doesn’t do any good?”
“It does, from a marketing standpoint. Think about it. People get haunted by a ghost. They paint the doors or hang drapes of haint blue. We stop visiting. The superstition works, meaning we ghosts must be real.”
“You get around much?”
“Depends by what you mean ‘much’?”
“You know King Gullah?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“What kind of a vampire is he?”
“A bloodsucker. Same as you.”
“How do you know I’m a vampire?”
“You’re not?” She perked an eyebrow. The motion tossed a spurt of supernatural vapor from her temple.
“What do you know of this trouble between the werewolf clans?”
“The war. I’m looking forward to it.”
Her answer puzzled me. “In what way?”
“I need the company. Seems every ghost in Charleston does nothing but talk about the good old days. Pirate days. The Revolutionary War. Antebellum parties. Most of them call a stereo a gramophone, for God’s sake. I can’t wait for someone to teach me how to get on the Internet.”
Deliah pressed her fingers on the table as if punching a keyboard. Trouble was, her fingers went right through the table.
“Can you dish some dirt on the guests?”
“Depends.” She slid off the table and looked at the guests and waitstaff filing past in the hall. “Unfortunately, my neighborhood has got some really boring people. I mean, this is Charleston and the folks I haunt think sneaking an extra doughnut is naughty behavior.”
I asked, “Think you can tip me off in case someone wants to make trouble?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
Deliah sighed. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. I could ask for the usual. A dinner out. A date. But”—she passed her hand through her middle—“it’d be pointless.”
Piexotto strutted by. She glanced at the remaining blocks of ice and frowned for my benefit. “The party starts in a half hour.” She stabbed theatrically with the fork. The phone on her belt chimed and she snatched it, responding to the call by complaining, “Are we ready? You kidding? Not with this help.”
“Time to get back to work,” I whispered to Deliah.
She showed me how to use the dumbwaiter. The elevator creaked up a few feet and creaked back down.
Piexotto stared at the dumbwaiter. “I thought it was broken.” Deliah walked behind her.
I tapped the control switch. “I guess I fixed it.”
“Good,” Piexotto said. “Now finish taking the ice upstairs.”
Deliah made herself swell until her body matched Piexotto’s proportions and she mimicked the caterer’s gestures. I chuckled and Piexotto turned around to see what I found amusing.
“Later, Felix,” Deliah said. The wall behind her showed through as she became transparent and vanished.
“Well,” Piexotto snapped, “are you going to stand there or get to work?”
I loaded the dumbwaiter with eight blocks and sent the elevator on its way. I rushed up the stairs and met the dumbwaiter on the top floor. I chopped the ice and stocked the tubs. As soon as I had finished putting away the last of the blocks, Piexotto ordered me to take an apparatus made of wooden shafts with pulleys and ropes to a cell on the top floor.
I helped a were in black overalls and a tool belt put the apparatus together like this was a project from IKEA. He explained it was a replica “crane of pain,” a torture device that had been used in the jail.
The crane resembled the letter H with two ropes dangling from pulleys on the top supports. Another set of ropes connected to pulleys along the bottom. Each rope wound through a separate winch. The victim was stretched between the ends of the H to suffer not only from having his (or her—I was told women were also tortured) limbs wrenched to the breaking point but also from being whipped and burned.
The handyman were and I were on our knees adjusting the bottom pulleys when a young woman in glasses came up to us.
Sniff. Were.
She wore a Revolutionary War period dress with the bodice cut so low she was one hiccup away from indecent exposure. She pulled the hooks on the ends of the ropes dangling from the crane part. “Very nice. Is this for play or decoration?”
“It’s for play.” The were handyman pointed to a large toolbox by the foot of the crane. “We got lots of toys. Paddles. Cat-o’-nine-tails. Gags. Clamps…”
“Where do I sign up?” Her eyes were lit up like she was famished and looking at a menu. “I don’t want to miss my turn.”
The handyman replied, “Downstairs. Make sure you fill out a limits sheet. Don’t forget your safe word.”
When we had finished assembling the crane of pain, I returned downstairs. Piexotto put me to work helping other waitstaff bring in trays of food from a van parked outside the back door. We shuffled back and forth like garden ants.
Me, vampire enforcer, a wage slave. The indignity.
We scattered the trays on tables about the jail and set up chafing dishes.
Meanwhile, Angela was busy schmoozing with other weres in various costumes: the colonial period; blue, gray, or butternut uniforms from the War Between the States; pirates; and a few wearing speakeasy fashion.
I was put to work on the bottom floor. My job was carrying trays loaded with hors d’oeuvres. But the garlic shrimp appetizers put me off, and I traded places with a waitress who offered flutes of champagne. She and I crisscrossed through the crowds. I thought the weres would needle me about being a vampire serving them. But I was the hired help and all but invisible.
The one time I ran into Angela, she plucked a flute from my tray. She kept talking to three guests, a man and two women dressed like the crew from Mutiny on the Bounty.
A twinge of humiliation stung me when Angela acknowledged me with a curt thanks. But as I turned away, she pinched my left butt cheek and smiled from behind the champagne flute, like both of us were in on the same joke.
I’d like it better if she was serving booze and I was the one schmoozing and pinching butts.
Eric Bourbon approached in the uniform of a Revolutionary War officer, complete with a powdered wig. He waved dollar bills and shoved them in my shirt pocket. “Go fetch me a real drink and I’ll make it worth your while. I’d like a scotch and soda.”
Asshole. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Calhoun were enemies.”
“We’re engaged in a truce. Even I’m welcome. I was curious to see what kind of a party the lopsided bastard can throw.” He adjusted his wig. “Now run along and get my drink.”
Bourbon waved, abruptly forgotting about me, and joined a group of weres dressed like Cherokees.
I took Bourbon’s money out of my pocket and jammed it in the tip jar on the wine table. I got another tray of champagne flutes and circulated through the jail.
When I was back on the ground floor, there was a swell of agitated voices from the front door. My ears tingled, alerting me of trouble.
I wove through the crowd toward the entrance. A heavy black curtain hung over the threshold between the hall and the foyer.
I recognized the voice on the other side of the curtain.
King Gullah.
CHAPTER 50
We didn’t need King Gullah crashing the Werewolf Costume Ball.
I parted the curtain and slipped into the foyer of the jail.
Gullah stood with Rooster by his side. There was a second curtain blocking the view from the street.
A pirate, a princess in white satin and strands of pearls draped across her cleavage, and a portly guy in the costume of Benjamin Franklin confronted King Gullah.
He was barefoot and dressed in rags, clean, but patched and tattered. The only touches that revealed his esteemed position as king were his crystal-knobbed cane and a simple crown of wrought gold. Gullah wanted to advertise his slave roots and at the same time let everyone know that he was a player in the local supernatural aristocracy. Rooster wore the uniform of a Union soldier, specifically an officer in the 54th Infantry Regiment.
The pretend Franklin held himself an arm’s distance from Gullah. “But, Mr. Gullah—”
“King Gullah,” Rooster interrupted.
“Of course. King Gullah,” the pretend Franklin corrected himself. “But this is a private party.”
“So I see. But how can you have a ball, especially a costume ball, and not invite me?”
“Really, please, King Gullah. You need an invitation.”
“How about this for an invitation?” Gullah snapped his fingers.
Rooster reached to the curtain behind him and held it open. Eight young women filed through the gap. All wore puffy black bonnets and loose black cloaks that billowed to the floor.
The first girl in line had skin the color of a roasted coffee bean. The next girl had a lighter hue, that of coffee with a splash of milk. Each girl had progressively lighter skin. The last girl had an alabaster complexion.
The girls formed a semicircle behind Gullah. As if on cue, each girl doffed her bonnet and undid the neck ribbons holding the cloaks in place.
The first girl, with her inky complexion, wore a gown of royal opulence. Pearls and diamonds sparkled in the mass of curls on her head.
The next girl wore a less fancy gown, one of a lady of the upper class.
The next girl wore the dress of a well-off shopkeeper.
And so each girl wore a costume on a lower rung of the period’s economic scale. The ice blonde who was last in line wore a short dress of rags that matched Gullah’s outfit. But instead of a crown, she had an iron collar and iron wrist manacles connected by a rusty chain.
Werewolf Smackdown Page 20
