The Shifters (4 page)

B
ourbon Street.

New Orleans' most famous tourist attraction, the sleazy, noisy, rowdy, free-for-all strip that stretched fourteen blocks from Canal Street almost to Esplanade. It was closed to automobile traffic every night of the week so tourists and revelers could walk unimpeded down the rough pavement, taking in the street performers, dodging—or inviting—the bead-throwing partiers on the balconies above, dropping in through the wide-open doors of every music club, strip club, bar, souvenir shop, voodoo shop and sex toy shop along the way. Bourbon was a wild and woolly, nonstop circus of decadence and indulgence.

Caitlin hated it.

There were so many pleasures in New Orleans, sensual and otherwise, that were so much more complicated and rewarding than boorish Bourbon…although it did serve the purpose of keeping the more obnoxious visitors to NOLA confined in one easily avoidable part of the city.

What fewer people knew was that Bourbon was where many of the city's shapeshifters naturally gravitated. More obviously, it was also the drug capital of the Quarter.

Before venturing up to Bourbon, Caitlin waited for dark, since the shifters she meant to call on rarely showed their faces before sunset. And that gave her time to go back to the shop and dress for the occasion…in a glamour.

A glamour was one of Caitlin's favorite spells. Not everyone could do it, but she was a quick study, and she'd had a good teacher…but she wasn't going to think about that.

Standing in front of a full-length mirror by the light of the moon helped but wasn't mandatory. In a pinch, the light of a candle did nicely. What
was
mandatory was the relaxation, the becoming conscious of every part of her body…and then focusing particularly on the whole of her skin. She looked into the mirror and breathed slowly, keenly aware of the glow of the candlelight on her…until she began to feel the glow
as photons of light, a rain of warmth over her entire body. She began to chant softly:

“Light pass through me, no one will see me. Light pass through me, no one will see me. Light pass through me, no one will see me…”

She chanted and stared into the mirror, focusing on the light, until the borders of her silhouette became hazy, insubstantial, until her whole body started wavering, like the warm flickering of a candle flame…until all she could see in the mirror was light.

And then she could see the cabinet behind her, as if she was no longer there. She felt, not saw, herself smile, and said softly to herself, “Everything seen and those not seen, let me walk now in between. As I say, so mote it be!”

She turned, invisibly, and walked toward the door.

 

On Bourbon, Caitlin strode through the crowds clogging the street with no fear of the prowling pickpockets and the inevitable drunk men who would have been hitting on her, hitting hard, had she not been protected by the cloak of the glamour. She loved the power of walking invisible as the air, through the warring music blasting from the wide-open doors of the clubs: Zydeco; karaoke; slow, sultry jazz…

The street looked, as always, like a stage set. There was something about the flatness of it, she
thought—being able to see for blocks and blocks, and the balconies of revelers up above…there was a Shakespearean flavor to everything that she had to admit was appealing…especially when you were invisible.

She was entirely unnoticed by the drunk revelers, the break-tap-dancing teenagers…the buskers holding signs advertising Huge Ass Beers To Go and the opposing signs waved by religious crazies: God Punishes All Sinners. Caitlin squeezed quickly by the sign wielders, grimacing…. Then, as she was passing a blind street musician wearing sunglasses à la Ray Charles, he stepped right in her path and bowed, a breathtakingly courtly gesture, and spoke. “Lovely lady.”

Caitlin froze, as confused as the crowd of tourists around her, who looked around them with comic double-takes, having no idea who or what the musician was talking to, unable to even wrap their minds around the idea that he was seeing anyone at all. It could all just have been part of the show to them.

No big surprise,
Caitlin told herself. There were psychics of all kinds in NOLA—either the city drew them or actually bred them—and it wasn't much of a stretch that a blind man would have learned to use other senses.

But she had her own mission, so she quickly side stepped the jazzman and continued on into the crowd.

 

Behind her on the sidewalk, Ryder straightened in his Ray Charles body, swept up the hat containing his tips, and followed her at a distance, tapping his cane for show.

The glamour was a good one, he would give her that. It demonstrated as high a level of skill as unmasking him in the shop earlier that day had done. If this Keeper's sisters were as good as she was, there was a strong Keeper presence in the city, as strong as he'd seen in any town for a long time…as strong as their parents' had been rumored to be.

That didn't mean he trusted her. She had issues, this one, obviously. But she might be useful, down the line. And she was on a mission tonight—first the vampire detective, now this obvious continuance of her investigation, which, whatever it was, required a glamour. Which made it his business to investigate.

Besides, invisible as she may have been to the others around them, for him, the view from behind wasn't bad at all.

Ryder was enjoying being on Bourbon again. The sights and sounds were intoxicating…neon lights in all colors and the sparkling, feathered costumes of the revelers…the long, sleek legs of the showgirls,
the bright, glazed eyes of the tourists, the smells of chocolate and piña coladas….

His impulse was to follow every impulse.

Instead he focused and followed Caitlin.

 

Caitlin weaved forward through the crowd, her jaw now clenched grimly. It was probably the influence of Halloween coming up, but it was barely nine o'clock and the partiers seemed even more out of control than usual. The drunk guy on the balcony to her right, blatantly taking camera phone shots of his girlfriend's crotch. The college crowd on the left balcony dangling beads off the railing, shouting “Show me your tits!” and “Give me sumpin'!” to everyone passing by. The stumbling drunk bridal par ties, one group right now passing Caitlin with a sullen bride in the middle wearing a T-shirt reading I'm The Bride, Those Are The Bitches.

And Caitlin knew it was just beginning. As the night and the
bon temps
rolled on, more and more people would be holding their friends up as they stumbled from one bar to the next, stopping to partake of every “Huge Ass Beer!” and Hurricane and Hand Grenade and Jello shot offered to them. I Got Bourbon-Faced On Shit Street T-shirts were popular souvenirs for a reason. So many wasted lives—literally.

Caitlin put on speed as she saw her goal ahead of her. The music literally rocked her as she approached;
Bons Temps was one of the loudest clubs on Bourbon, and that was saying a lot.

She stepped through the doors and saw that there was a cover band up on stage, and even at this decibel range, the musical talent was obvious; the best musicians flocked to New Orleans just as surely as they did to Nashville and L.A.

These particular musicians, no surprise, were clearly altered: drunk, stoned, high.

Wasted.

The lead singer, Case, had a falsetto to rival Steve Connor and an Iggy Pop tilt to his slim hips; in his bandanna and artfully ripped T-shirt, he was a pirate who expertly twirled the mike in his fingers and charmed the female patrons with a mad and manic gleam in his eyes. The very young keyboard player, Danny, wore a Megadeth T-shirt and looked like an angel with his long, shimmering hair and beatific face…until you noticed his completely empty eyes.

Caitlin's stomach heaved, and she had to turn away from the stage.

The floor was always packed at Bons Temps; no other Bourbon Street club was so crowded, so consistently. Not just because the guys were great musicians; they were, but there was a little something extra. When Case sang Aerosmith, sometimes you could swear you were looking at Steven Tyler. A Police number? It might have been that third Hurricane,
but sometimes you would bet your life it was a young Sting up there singing. Eminem, Bono, Flo Rida…it was a subtle thing, but wildly effective with the drunk crowds….

Because Case and Danny were shapeshifters. The most skilled species: shifters whose expertise was taking on different human forms.

And Caitlin had a long and ambiguous acquaintance with these two shifters.

Shapeshifters were rarely productive members of society; their sense of self was too amorphous, and because of that inconstancy and lack of center, they tended toward indulgences of all kinds. But they were also wildly charismatic, in no small part because they could subtly alter their physical form to match other people's fantasies, and they were often excellent psychics, because they passed through the astral, a parallel dimension of spirits and entities, easily used for transportation between planes of reality, every time they shifted. And in the astral, all kinds of things could be gleaned: past, present and future.

The rowdy lead singer, Case, was the charismatic. But Danny…Danny was the psychic. One of New Orleans' best, which was saying a hell of a lot—that is, when he was straight enough to concentrate, which was almost never, these days.

Wasted,
Caitlin thought again.
Such a waste.

She pulled her eyes away from Danny and con
centrated on Case: skinny as Keith Richards, for the same reasons, in pencil-leg black jeans, sporting alligator boots with outrageously long toes. He was leaning into the crowd with Danny now, threatening to topple off the stage into the throng, and shouting, “Somebody freakin' scream!”

And then, as he straightened, his eyes fell on the corner where Caitlin stood…and he stopped for an instant, staring. Then his smile curved. Caitlin thought,
He's good.
He saw her. Of course he did; he always could. She let the glamour slip away from her like a cloak, and he gazed full into her face. Then he lifted the mike again and shouted, “Somebody make some noise!”

As the crowd went wild on the floor beneath him, he turned the mike over to the guitarist for a solo and dropped off the stage, landing hard on those ridiculous boots and swaggering out into the crowd, stopping to let some drunk sorority girl kiss him, openmouthed and sloppy.

Caitlin turned away and walked out the back door, into the small inner courtyard, away from the noise. The courtyard was mostly used for storage. Cases of booze were stacked to the eaves against the inner wall, but there was a small outdoor bar, framed by white strings of Christmas lights, tonight unmanned and deserted.

Case pushed out through the double doors and into
the dark. He was already flicking a Zippo, lighting a cigarette, dragging hard, and Caitlin wondered wearily what it would be laced with tonight.

As if hearing her thoughts, he extended the cigarette toward her mockingly. She stared at him, ignoring his outstretched hand, and history vibrated between them like an electric pulse.

Finally he smiled. “Ah, the little Keeper. Sister Goldenhair Surprise. Nice glamour, by the way. You're getting good at that. We'll have you full-tilt shifting any day now.”

Her anger flared, and she answered without thinking. “Not in this lifetime.”

He gave her a “We'll see” smile and dragged on his cigarette. “Well, Keeper, has someone been bad?” He asked the question slyly, and she jolted.
So he does know something,
she thought, trying to conceal her excitement.

“Why would you say that?” she answered, unconsciously echoing Jagger DeFarge.

“Someone must have been pretty bad, to bring you up to our little den of iniquity. Or is that
din?
” he corrected himself, reaching to his ears and pulling out earplugs, the only thing that had kept him from going deaf for all these years.

“I need…” She hesitated.

“My help?” His eyes gleamed at her.

“Some information,” she said coldly.

“You're in luck. I'm running a special tonight.” He sat back on a bar stool, legs spread casually—nothing to do with the conversation, of course.

Caitlin's heart turned over with the old, familiar pain, then she answered back, sharp and hard. “Good thing I've got credit running into the next century, then.”

To her surprise, he laughed aloud, and she realized with relief that with that comeback she had scored—enough to keep him playing along, at least for a while. “There are people dying of some kind of bad batch,” she said quickly, while he was still smiling. “Meth, the police think.”

His eyes widened innocently. “‘Just Say No.'”

She ignored that. “I want to know if you know any thing about it.”

Caitlin suddenly noticed there was a bartender be hind the bar now, a young kid, college age, with good enough instincts not to hover; he was quietly restocking the shelves. Case snapped at him, “Jack and Cokes over here,” and waited until the kid turned away to answer Caitlin.

“What about drugs don't I know?” he quipped. “But it's only tourists who are dying, sugar. NHI.”

NHI was a cop insult referring to the lowest of lowlifes: No Humans Involved. Of course, in New Orleans that could get confusing….

“Just tourists,” Caitlin echoed, pondering.

“Drug virgins,” Case elaborated helpfully. “Couldn't handle the high.”

But why?
Caitlin wondered.
Tourists doing meth? It didn't make sense.

The young bartender set drinks in front of them. Caitlin ignored hers, while Case drained his in one pull.

 

Behind the bar, cloaked as the college kid, Ryder bided his time. It was taking everything he had to conceal his disgust for Case, for the scene playing out before him. Classic Shifter, this one, taking full advantage of his glamours, which wouldn't work on an Other, obviously, but humans fell for them every time. And Keepers, too, it looked like. Even with her specialized knowledge, Caitlin had been ensnared, at least at one time.
And by what? This pathetic excuse for an Other, so enamored of his powers that he's lost all sense of who he ever was—the center cannot hold. And a drunk and an addict on top of that, clearly.