Starry Knight (27 page)

“How long ago was it built?” she asked, genuinely interested.

“Back around seventeen fifty,” he replied. “King Louis had it built for the Sisters of Ursuline, who came over from France to provide medical care and to run a school for the daughters of the wealthy Creoles. There’s a wonderful old story that tells how it was saved from the Great Fire of New Orleans by Our Lady of Prompt Succor.”

“Our Lady of Prompt Succor?”

While she’d been raised in the Catholic faith, that particular incarnation of the Blessed Virgin had somehow eluded her.

“The patron saint of New Orleans,” he replied with a grin. “Many miracles have been attributed to her intercessions, including sparing the convent from the fire.”

“How’d she do it?” Vanessa asked, fighting a grin. “Appear out of the clouds with a fire extinguisher?”

“Not exactly.” Beau gave her a censorious glare, letting her know wisecracks were unwelcome. “As the story goes, the convent was facing imminent destruction. The fire had already consumed the cathedral, the rectory, and scores of surrounding shops and houses. A strong wind was blowing across Jackson Square, driving the flames straight toward the nunnery. When the order was given to evacuate, some of the sisters and the Mother Superior ran up the staircase clutching a small golden statue of the Madonna. They set the figure on a window seat, facing the flames, and began to pray. ‘Our Lady of Prompt Succor, we are lost unless you hasten to our aid!’ Almost instantly, the wind changed direction, blowing back the flames and saving the convent.” He ran a hand through his hair as his gaze met Vanessa’s. “It’s just too bad the statue wasn’t there during Hurricane Katrina.”

“Why? What happened to it?”

“The statue or the convent?”

“Both.”

“The statue was moved to the new convent on State Street,” he told her. “And as far as the old convent goes, the hurricane blew down a chimney, setting off the fire sprinklers. The water really messed up the interior.”

Beau stopped at the corner of Chartres and Ursulines before a low gray wall. On the other side, beyond a sizeable lawn and boxwood knot garden, stood a palatial home with a stone face. A round window with a little cross ornamented the pediment crowning the roofline.

“This is the old convent,” he said, gesturing toward the building. “Back in the eighteen hundreds, the French Quarter was a pretty awful place. The city’s leaders, hoping to attract a better element, encouraged the fashionable families of Paris to send their daughters here to find husbands. The young ladies arrived in great numbers, with trousseaus packed in coffin-shaped trunks. The sisters took them in and packed away their trunks until the girls got engaged. When the trunks were brought down, all were found to be empty. Rumors spread rapidly throughout the Quarter that the girls had smuggled in vampires.”

“It seems far more likely somebody broke into the attic and stole their belongings,” Vanessa offered, feeling the need to be the voice of reason.

“Maybe so,” Beau returned, pointing to the house. “But explain this if you can. The upstairs windows are sealed with more than eight thousand screws, but they still fly open sometimes for no apparent reason.”

“That can’t be true,” she protested, despite the shiver inching down her spine. “Why would vampires open the windows?”

He shrugged. “Who knows why the undead do what they do?”

They moved up Ursulines, stopping at the corner of Royal Street outside an elegant but eerie-looking brick building with ornate ironwork and French doors.

“This is the house I was telling you about—the one belonging to Jacques Saint-Germain.”

Vanessa scrutinized the premises, keeping an eye out for the cat or any sign of movement from within, but saw no signs of life. “What if we just knocked on the door?”

With a grin that said, “I dare you,” he gestured toward the house. “Be my guest.”

Vanessa, not about to be intimidated, strode to the front door and proceeded to knock like she meant business while Beau stood on the sidewalk, looking equal parts amused and impressed.

Unable to raise a response from within, she gave up and rejoined him. “Nobody’s home.”

“Nobody’s ever home. Or so he’d like us to believe.” He led the way up Royal Street. “Any word yet from your Scotsman?”

“I’m afraid not,” she replied dejectedly.

“Well, if you ask me, it’s his loss.”

“That’s just what I think,” she said with a smile she didn’t feel.

He walked on with her a step or two behind before drawing to a halt before a grand house similar to, but even bigger than the one allegedly belonging to St. Germain.

“This place, reputed to be the most haunted house in the city, once belonged to the actor Nicolas Cage.” Turning to her, he added, “You might recall he played a vampire in a movie back in the late eighties.”

“
Vampire’s Kiss
,” she volunteered. She’d always loved vampire books and movies, another reason for becoming a paranormal investigator.

“That’s right.” He turned back to the house. “This place used to belong to Delphine LaLaurie, who did some shocking things within these walls. It’s said she witnessed the brutal murder of her parents by their slaves when she was a girl, but, in my opinion, that’s no excuse for the heinous things she did to her own.”

Vanessa could feel an energy emanating from the house, a dark, terrible energy that gave her the heebie-jeebies. “What kinds of things?”

He arched an eyebrow in her direction. “Do you really want to know?”

“Probably not.” She gulped. “But tell me anyway.”

“Well, as the legend goes, Madame LaLaurie moved here with her third husband, a physician, around eighteen-twenty. The couple liked to throw parties. During one of these affairs, a fire broke out in the kitchen, which, as was the norm back then, was located across the courtyard. When the fire brigade entered, they found two slaves chained to the stove. In a state of near-hysteria, the slaves begged the firemen to look in the attic. Finding the door locked, the firemen broke it down with an axe. The space, to their horror, reeked of rotting flesh and human waste, but the stench was nothing compared to its cause. Slaves, most dead, some alive, were chained to the walls and floor. It looked as if they’d been subjected to bizarre medical experiments. One man had been castrated. A woman, locked in a cage, had her limbs broken and reset at all sorts of odd angles. Some had their mouths sewn shut. Half the flesh on the face of a boy had been peeled back to reveal the musculature underneath. The firemen also discovered teacups and saucers encrusted with the remnants of human blood.”

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.”

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.”