Bayou Nights

by Julie Mulhern

  She smiled up at him. “Thank you. This looks delicious.”

  “May I bring you anything else?”

  Some sugar to sweeten Drake’s disposition? The man looked positively frightening. “No, thank you.” She lifted her spoon.

  Drake leaned forward. “What did you give him?”

  “Nothing. A photograph.”

  “A photograph of whom?”

  “Of me when I was a child. I suggest you eat. When whoever sent that man realizes he brought back something worthless, he might return.”

  Drake pushed his chair away from the table as if he meant to leave that very moment.

  “Just try the etouffée.” Steam rose from the bowl and she inhaled the scents of garlic and onions and perfectly prepared crawfish. She lifted a bite to her lips and tasted. “It’s delicious.”

  A frown tightened Drake’s mouth and wrinkled his forehead. “for you here.” He was worried about her. That might be sweet if he hadn’t made it abundantly clear he had no interest in her.

  Christine pointed her now empty spoon at him. “I asked for your help finding my father. I didn’t ask you to protect me.”

  “You need protecting.”

  “Not from a man who’ll disappear as soon as he’s able.” The words slipped through her lips unbidden and unconsidered. She wished them back. A momentary lapse, a peek behind the curtain, they revealed entirely too much.

  One ill-considered utterance and she’d showed him everything. The yawning chasm of loneliness. The effort it sometimes took to face another day alone. The impossibility of believing in anyone but herself. Worse, she’d shown him how much his rejection stung.

  He picked up his spoon. “What makes you think I’ll leave?”

  She stared at him while her heart pulled loose from its moorings and rattled around her chest like a marble in a shoebox.

  He dug his spoon into the etouffée and rice, seemingly unaware of the way his question had affected her. Seemingly. Beneath his upright, uptight exterior was a man of infinite bravery and intelligence. He knew what he’d done.

  “I had a great uncle who used to delight in offering the children in the family candy,” she said.

  Drake regarded her over another spoonful of etouffée, one brow slightly raised.

  “He’d hold out a bit of taffy or a praline. But as soon as one of my cousins or I reached for it, he’d snatch it out of our grasp. You’ve got to be quicker than that, he’d tell us. My grandmother and the other adults would scold him but he loved his game.”

  “Your point?”

  “Don’t offer something you have no intention of giving.”

  He stared at her, his eyes holding an intensity she didn’t recognize. Her heart, already rattling around her chest, ricocheted off her right rib then sped toward her stomach. Her mouth went dry and she reached for the water glass.

  A moment passed in electric silence.

  “What happened to your great uncle?”

  “I kicked him in the shins and took the praline. No one blamed me.”

  He snorted softly. “Of course you did.” He reached across the table and claimed her hand. “I won’t leave until you and your father are safe. You have my promise.”

  But he would leave. She had to remember that because, if she wasn’t careful, he’d take her heart with him. She pulled her hand free and focused her attention on the meal in front of her. “Thank you.”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Oh?” She concentrated on spooning a particularly succulent looking bit of crawfish.

  “Why don’t you shoot to kill?”

  Her spoon froze next to a mound of rice. He’d saved her how many times? He deserved an answer.

  “My father had a friend, Uncle Beau, I called him. He was as big as a barrel with a laugh loud enough to echo over acreage. When he was a boy, he lied about his age and joined up to fight in the war. Toward the end, I don’t think they were too picky about taking boys. Every so often Uncle Beau would go into a rage over the smallest thing. My father said it was because of something that happened when he was a soldier. Something bad.

  “One night, they had an argument…I don’t know about what. Uncle Beau got furiously angry. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at my father. His first shot missed. My father begged him to calm down. Uncle Beau’s second shot caught my father in the shoulder.” Christine reached for the water goblet.

  “What happened?”

  “My father shot him. He shot and killed his best friend. After that, gambling went from being a diversion to a necessity.” She glanced around the dining room. “May I see the coin?”

  He handed the bit of silver over without a word. He didn’t need words to say that he’d seen even deeper into her soul. He understood her fear. If she killed someone, some terrible destructive compulsion would eat her alive.

  She closed her fingers around the coin. All she wanted was to go home, climb into bed, and hide from the world. The coin had other plans. It pulsed in her hand like a living thing. “Have you finished?” She nodded toward Drake’s near empty bowl.

  “Why?”

  “I know where the water is.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Drake followed Christine out onto the banquette. “Where are we going?”

  “Jackson Square. We need to hurry. Would you please find us a carriage?” If a woman with a cane could hop with impatience, Christine was doing so, practically bouncing.

  “Be careful of that ankle.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The carriage?”

  He waved down a hack then assisted her aboard. He would have preferred a closed conveyance, something to hide them from prying eyes, but Christine’s hopping destroyed any hope of waiting.

  Even now, seated in the carriage, urgency rolled off her in waves. She leaned forward as if her posture could somehow make the horse trot faster, then she glanced over her shoulder and scowled.

  Was someone following them? He too glanced behind. There was nothing but the setting sun. It hung enormous in the western sky, casting long shadows.

  “Can you go faster?” she asked the driver.

  The man clucked to his horse. The sound made not the slightest difference to the horse’s pace. “You’re sure in a hurry.”

  “We have to get to the cathedral before they lock the doors.”

  The man turned, gave them an appraising look, grinned, and then snapped the reins. The horse trotted faster. Christine settled back against the seat.

  Moments later they rolled to a halt in front of an enormous building.

  “We’re here.” Relief colored her voice.

  Like everything else in New Orleans, its looks were deceiving. It looked like a castle built for a princess in an enchanted kingdom. “That’s the church?”

  “Cathedral,” she corrected. She glanced around the square, her brow wrinkled, her lower lip caught in her teeth as if she expected every villain who’d attacked them to appear at once.

  “Who’s that?” He pointed at a statue in the middle of a grassy square.

  “Jackson.”

  “Is this where we’re supposed to meet at eleven?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was suddenly flat. “Let’s get inside.”

  They slipped through the cathedral’s heavy front doors. Inside, cherubs holding shells filled with holy water awaited them while light through the western windows and dangling chandeliers illuminated a vaulted ceiling. Drake peered upward. Portraits of saints surrounded an ornate painting of a Biblical scene. Jesus blessed a kneeling man.

  “I have to go up there.” Christine pointed at an altar surrounded by a phalanx of saints and angels.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.” She started down the aisle. “Keep watch.”

  Of what? The way her bottom swayed when she walked? The way her slight limp accentuated its movement? Probably not what she meant. An image of what might have been—Christine pinned beneath him while his lips found infinite ways to bring her
pleasure—grabbed him by the throat. She disappeared behind the altar and Drake turned away.

  The cherubs at the entrance looked at him sternly as if they sensed the impure thoughts sullying their home.

  The damn city was making him fanciful. He shifted his gaze upward. Columns and balconies and scrollwork. New Orleans was lousy with them. Even inside the cathedral, they reigned.

  “It’s a lovely place, is it not?”

  Somehow a priest had snuck up on him.

  Drake glanced at the altar. Christine was safely hidden from view. “It is.”

  “I am Pére Antoine. Welcome to God’s house.” The cadence of the priest’s voice was similar to Hector’s. His habit a rough brown instead of the expected black, the hard lines of his face at odds with the softness of his brown eyes.

  Drake blinked. “Thank you.”

  “Your first time here, yes?”

  Drake nodded.

  “This is not the first church on this site.”

  “Oh?” Still no sign of Christine. Probably a good thing. He didn’t relish the idea of explaining to the priest that Christine had been poking around his altar looking for water that gave eternal life.

  “The first burned.” Pére Antoine shook his head sadly. “They built another but it was not grand enough. Now we have this.” His arm swept through air scented faintly of frankincense.

  “It’s a beautiful cathedral.”

  The priest nodded. “You are not from here. Your accent is foreign.”

  Pot. Kettle. Black. “New York.”

  “Ah…” Pére Antoine stroked his chin. “You are a Yankee.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “What brings you to New Orleans?”

  Drake looked more closely at the priest. In addition to his old-world accent, an old-world air hung on him like a surplice. Did he know Hector? “Why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity. Nothing more.”

  Drake had the distinct impression the priest was lying. “Business.”

  “What sort of business are you in, sir?”

  “Nothing as important as saving souls.”

  Pére Antoine’s whiskered cheeks rounded with a gentle smile. “There is no greater calling. Although something about you tells me you too fight the Lord’s battles.”

  “I don’t save souls.”

  “No.” The priest rubbed his chin and regarded Drake with eyes both kind and wise. “You save lives. I can sense that.”

  Drake risked a quick glance at the altar. Had she found the water? No ridiculous hat, no softly swaying hips, no sparkling eyes in sight.

  The priest cleared his throat, reclaiming Drake’s attention.

  “How?” Drake’s voice echoed through the church. “How can you sense something like that?”

  “I’m an old man; I’ve seen much. People are a mix of good and evil. Some struggle their whole lives with the darker sides of their nature and find God at the end.” Another gentle smile graced his lips as if he remembered someone who’d turned to the Church at the end. “Others choose their path early. Are you familiar with asceticism, Mister…?”

  “Drake.”

  “Mr. Drake.” The priest said his name as if weighing the short syllable. Perhaps he was. Here in the land of French and Spanish surnames that trailed vowels like tails on a kite, Drake probably sounded foreign. The priest fixed his gaze on the ceiling soaring above them. “Are you familiar with asceticism, Mr. Drake?”

  “You mean the abstinence from worldly pleasures in pursuit of spiritual goals?”

  Pére Antoine nodded. “You strike me, Mr. Drake, as a man who has turned his back on the things in this world that bring pleasure in order to fight for your cause.” Now the priest glanced at the altar. “I wonder, is that really necessary?”

  “You took a vow of celibacy.”

  “Of the body, my son, not of the soul. What is a shepherd who doesn’t love his flock?” Pére Antoine shifted his gaze back to Drake. “Passing through this world alone, without love, is too hard for most men.”

  “I have friends.” Had his voice ever sounded so defensive?

  “A bit of advice from an old man?”

  Drake nodded. What else could he do?

  “If love wells in your heart, let it bring you happiness.”

  Love? Love? Had the priest lost his mind? Drake fisted his hands. Knocking the noses off the smirking cherubs suddenly seemed a good idea, that or running from the cathedral, from Christine. Love didn’t bring happiness. It brought loss. Drake shook his head. “I think not.”

  “How can a man such as yourself be a coward?”

  “There is too much evil in the world.” Love was too fragile.

  “If we choose not to love, evil has already won.”

  The priest was wrong. “My father did what I do. My mother was murdered because of it. My sister married a man with the same job. Her throat was cut.” Drake’s guts twisted with remembered pain. They liquefied at the thought Christine might share the same fate.

  “So you turn your back on love because of what might happen?” The priest shook his head sadly. “I sensed you were braver than that.”

  The priest simply didn’t understand. Drake looked up at one of the rococo saints painted on the ceiling. “There is evil. Here. In this city.” He would meet it in a few hours. Christine would too.

  “There is always evil. There is always goodness. You must seize what happiness you can find. You must fight for it.”

  …

  Voices carried down the length of the apse, one of them Drake’s.

  Christine risked a peek around the edge of the altar. Drake stood a full head taller than the priest with whom he conversed. His shoulders were at least twice as broad. The distance was too great to see the exact details of his face. She didn’t need to see his face to know how the stark planes of his cheeks cracked when he smiled, or that his eyes, usually so serious, could dance with humor…or desire.

  Christine sat back on her heels and gazed at the altar. In the space of a day, he’d gone from being an uptight Yankee to a man whose eyes danced? She shook her head.

  There was no time for such foolishness. He’d rejected her. It shouldn’t matter if his eyes waltzed or cake-walked or even tangoed.

  Except it did.

  Flanking the altar, St. Peter and St. Michael stared balefully at her.

  Rightly so. She had better things to do than daydream over a man she didn’t even want. A man who didn’t want her. For the fifth time, she ran her fingers along the altar’s smooth surface. Somewhere there had to be a hidden button. Something.

  Nothing.

  She blew at a strand of hair that had escaped her coiffure. The coins had sent them here, had sent her to the altar. The secret had to be close. She shoved her hand in her pocket but the bits of silver, having gotten her this far, refused further assistance.

  Again she ran her fingers along the smooth surface, more slowly this time. And this time they found three notches. Three? Notches?

  She glanced around. Her only audience remained St. Peter with his key and St. Michael with his sword. The cherubs didn’t count. They were too busy playing what looked like patty-cake to cast their plaster gazes her way. As for the haloed women kneeling on plinths, their eyes were closed.

  Christine closed her fingers around the coins and slotted them, one by one, into the notches. The coins disappeared. She held her breath.

  Nothing happened.

  Not. One. Thing.

  No hidden drawer slid open.

  No tile on the floor pivoted to reveal a cache of priceless…water.

  No sound of cogs or wheels turning reached her straining ears.

  Just the sounds of heels hitting tile floors and voices drawing closer.

  Damn. Drake’s job was to keep people away from the altar, not lead them to it. Christine’s shoulders tensed.

  “Tell me about those cherubs at the entrance.” Drake’s voice carried down the aisle and the steps stopped.

&nb
sp; Christine struggled to her feet, her ankle stiff as a cypress plank. She grabbed the corner of the altar for support.

  Screech!

  The sound of stone against stone reverberated through the cathedral.

  Drake and the priest turned and gaped at her. Well, maybe not at her. The top of the altar had pivoted. That was probably more gape-worthy than the woman standing in the sanctuary.

  Either way, the priest looked positively frightening, moving so quickly toward the altar he seemed to be floating.

  She narrowed her eyes. He was floating.

  “Who are you?” The man’s—ghost’s—whiskers bristled with ire.

  “Christine Lambert.”

  “What have you done to my altar?” His voice screeched louder than the stone.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Then she peered inside.

  Nestled within was a bundle wrapped in burlap and twine.

  “What have you done?” The priest ran his fingers through the fringe of his tonsure until his hair stood on end. That coupled with the apoplectic expression on his face made the man—the ghost—look like a lunatic.

  “I’m sorry, Father, but I need that.” She pointed to the bundle then reached.

  “No! Absolutely not. I’ve spent the past seventy years guarding that and you’re not going to take it.” A ghostly hand closed around her wrist. “What is in that bundle cannot leave this church.”

  The cold of his hand on her skin made her pause. “I need it to rescue my father.”

  The ghost glared at her. “You cannot take it.”

  She could. His grip was nowhere near strong enough to stop her.

  She reached.

  The ghost’s grip tightened.

  Not tightly enough. Her fingers closed on the bundle and she lifted it out of its hiding spot.

  With a deafening screech, the top of the altar swung back into place.

  The priest shifted his furious gaze between her and Drake. “It was safely hidden.”

  “They took my father.” She clutched the bundle to her breast. “I need this to get him back.”

  “Who is they?”

  She had no idea who had her father. Desdemona? Youx? LaLaurie? Maybe Hector. No matter, it was up to her to rescue him. She shook her head.

  The priest’s gaze darkened. “The life of one man matters little against the power of what you hold.”