Midnight Saints: Saints Mystery Series Hallwen Short Story Read online

  At this point he would typically choose a person from amongst the paying guests, but in my fright I instinctively pointed at Josephine. She pointed at herself, looked affronted then laughed and the other guests joined her.

  “Very well, Fanchon,” he said, removing his hat. “Let’s see if you deserve the honor to be the chooser of the slain.” He flipped his coat and took a step behind me, leaving me exposed with a hundred pairs of eyes on me.

  I took a deep breath and when I let it out the pages rustled in front of me. I held up my hand to steady them, and then rested my hands in position on keys. I knew once I started there was no stopping. The piece never let up. I had been sitting for what seemed like an eternity staring at the notes. I turned to the crowd and saw Josephine staring back at me urging me to start and when I looked ahead I saw Beau in the dining room, eating off of a discarded plate. He shot me a thumbs up and I found my strength. Without thinking I started tapping my foot to keep time and my fingers took off, starting the intricate beginning on their own. The swift key movements, when hit correctly are reminiscent of the sounds of an invading army. I managed to keep perfect time with three beats to every measure. My fingers flittered up and down the keyboard so fast that I could barely keep track of them. I was moving along at a good clip, until the final pass, when I missed my chance to turn the page. I panicked for a moment and had to fudge through the grand ascension. I could feel the weight of my mentor’s gaze on my back and finally closed my eyes and let my hands go without the benefit of looking at the music. At the last run up the piano I found I held my breath and did not let it out until the last chord was struck. The ending was flawless.

  I kept my eyes tight, until I heard a slow clap behind me, followed by applause from the rest of the room. When I opened my eyes I found that Mr. Talbot had bowed low to me, yielding the floor. I stood up and curtseyed. Josephine had an ear-to-ear smile on her face and nodded at me in approval. Mr. Talbot turned his attention to me and quietly said, “Want to take the Danse Macabre tonight?”

  “Nope,” I said still smiling and jumped away from the piano.

  Mr. Talbot took his seat for the final piece and while he told his story of the Danse Macabre I made my way to Josephine.

  “Hands from the devil himself,” she said reaching out to touch my fingers. “Oh, hot!” she shrieked. “I didn’t know you were literally on fire.”

  I didn’t know if my hands were warm from the fright of being under pressure to play such a difficult song, or from the actual act of playing. But I was definitely relieved to be done with my job for the night. While Josephine and I watched the final piece, Stan slid in between us and said, “Who’d you see up in that room, Fanchon?”

  “I told you. Some lady in a black dress,” I replied.

  “Did you see her, Josephine?” he asked.

  “I didn’t see nothin’,” she said.

  “Sure it wasn’t you up there, Josephine?” he asked.

  We both turned around to look at him, Josephine with a stern look across her face. “No, indeed, sir. And I don’t think it’s very professional to go throwing around accusations. I was with Fanchon and my cousin Beau right up till I walked through that door.”

  “Is Beau the person in the dining room stealing shrimp?” We turned to see Beau stuffing shrimp and sauce into a baseball cap lined with napkins.

  “Tosh,” Josephine said. “That ain’t stealing. We was all done in there and I told him to come get it.”

  “I give the leftovers to a shelter, Josephine. I don’t just throw that food away.”

  “Well, if you want me to ask him to give his shrimp-filled hat to the homeless I’m sure he’d oblige.”

  The vein in Stan’s neck pulsed again. “Get your cousin out of here, Josephine.”

  She stomped away to the dining room and I turned back to Stan to ask him what he found upstairs.

  “It’s not what I found. It’s what I didn’t. The oil lamp is gone and so is Ms. Stewart’s Antebellum black onyx cameo necklace. It’s priceless, and I want it back by the end of the night or I’m holding Josephine responsible.”

  “How can you do that?” I pouted. “She was with me. I’d swear it on the Holy Bible. Look around for a woman in a black dress.”

  “Mighty convenient that you saw a woman in black, Fanchon, and I haven’t seen one all night. I’m telling you now you better come up with it by the end of the party at midnight or I’m calling the police.”

  I nodded and he left.

  Once the piece was finished, Mr. Talbot stood and said, “Thank you. Now if you will all go out to the front lawn and find your seats, dinner is served.”

  Josephine found me and the two of us worked together to get all of the stragglers out. Two older gentlemen who were already well past the point of common inebriation were waving at Josephine and blowing kisses to her. Josephine kept a wide smile plastered across her face but she looked to me without moving her lips and said, “Move along, jackasses.”

  When they were finally gone Josephine slammed the front door and said, “Let’s go out back.”

  As we walked through the house I said, “That cameo from the case upstairs was stolen from the Lavender Room and Stan thinks you and I had something to do with it. He said if it’s not found by the end of the night he’s holding you responsible.”

  She ignored me and continued out to the back porch. We found a young freckle-faced bartender closing up his mint Julep station. Josephine batted her big green eyes at him and placed an order for two. The awkward young man gladly unpacked his glasses and made up her order. She bounded over to me and held out a drink for me, proud of her haul. We wandered through the back alley by the gift shop which was empty of customers. The woman who ran the shop, Angie, was standing inside straightening up the display in the front window. She was the first person I had seen working at the plantation who was not wearing period attire. She waved at us as we passed and we responded in kind.

  To the right of the shop was the vendor pavilion, which had different stations selling everything from voodoo to candles.

  With all of the potential customers eating their dinner, the vendors had amassed together to chat.

  Josephine and I wandered in and found Adelaide Du’Ponde, the granddaughter of Josephine’s neighbor, sitting at a booth decorated with heavy purple curtains and silver stars. She had a sign in front of her that said “Psychic Readings $20.”

  “I didn’t know you were doing readings now,” Josephine said, stepping over to her table. Adelaide was wearing a billowing burgundy gown with puffy-long white sleeves and a multi-colored turban. She pulled off the turban and shook out her dark braided strands before saying, “Oh, I’m just in training. Grandmamma says I’m not ready for the big predictions yet, but I do a little palm reading here and there. Mammy says it’s my talent. I’m still not sure about everything, but if I find something I don’t understand I just make some shit up.”

  Josephine laughed, “I want a readin’. Listen, you give me a readin’ and I’ll let you finish off my drink. She passed her the half emptied mint julep, which Adalaide grabbed and sipped, nodding with approval.

  Josephine snatched my drink out of my hand, poured the rest of it into her cup and said, “Fanchon wants a readin’, too.”

  “I really don’t know,” replied Adelaide.

  Josephine pushed the cup to Adalaide and said, “Bought and paid for. Do Fanchon first.”

  Adalaide took a sip of the drink and set it aside. She bent under the table and pulled out a thick dog-eared book with a gold palm painted on the cover and plunked it down beside her.

  “Sit a spell, Fanchon,” she said.

  I sat down and reluctantly held out my palm, which she grabbed and moved close to her face to study.

  “Is there anything in particular you want to know about?” she asked.

  I thought on it. There was a lot I did want to know, but asking about it would involve me telling her all about my abusive parents and my inner dreams to mo
ve to New York City. My dreams belonged to me, and I didn’t want to share them, so I simply asked, “Will Jori and I stay together and get married?”

  She looked up at me and loosened her grip on my hand, “No, and it don’t take no psychic to tell you that. You aren’t staying with Jori. Jori’s boring. Ain’t no woman with half a mind gonna marry Jori.”

  I looked to Josephine with surprise, but she nodded her head at me. “Told you he’s boring.”

  I shushed at the two of them. “You know Jori’s here, don’t you?”

  “Don’t matter,” Adelaide said sipping her drink. “Jori wouldn’t say boo to me about it. He’s also a coward.”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I said. “Just tell me what you see, Adelaide.”

  She bent back over my hand and ran her finger down the center of my palm. She pointed to the line in the center. “This is a life line right here. Now you got somethin’ real interestin’ in it. Look how your life lines break off. You done gone off on a tangent when you were little. See this path here that faded away?” I bent down to look at it and saw what she meant.

  “What can cause a line to break off like that?” I asked.

  “Usually a big tragedy,” she said. “Anything big happen to you when you was a little girl?”

  My whole childhood had been one series of unhappy tragedies after another, but I couldn’t recall any particular tragedy.

  “Could be a lot of things,” I replied.

  She bent over again and ran her fingers over the center of my hand, pulling a candle close enough to my palm that I could feel its warmth.

  “Well, well,” she said. “Another change is coming. Then maybe we’ll see what all these lines are about.”

  I wondered if that next change was me moving to New York and asked, “Can a change be something like a change in location?”

  “It can be, but this fork is something bigger. Look. See how your old fork disappeared down here?” She ran the tip of her nail across the line, leaving a light scratch on my palm. She kept on going and then showed me my palm again. “Whatever path was presented to you when you were young that you got off of, you are going to get back on it.”

  “Will it be a good path? A better path?” I asked. Afraid that I was moving away from my white trash destiny now and might be about to go back towards it.

  “No way to say, Fanchon, but it’s going to be real interesting.”

  She smiled at me and handed me back my hand. “I think no matter what happens to you, Fanchon, you’re going to come out on top. Don’t take no psychic reading to know you got something special in you. You’re going to be just fine.”

  I slid to the side and let Josephine sit down in the hot seat. Josephine smiled eagerly at Adalaide and raised her eyebrows at her in a way that made Adalaide giggle. With a smile on her face she pulled Josephine’s hand towards her and started running her finger over her palm. She quickly sucked in a breath and dropped Josephine’s hand, letting it fall with a thud to the table. The smile was wiped from her face and she had lost two shades of color.

  She leaned back and stared at Josephine.

  “What?” Josephine asked.

  She shakily said, “Let me see your other hand?” She pulled Josephine’s left hand forward and ran her finger across the lines. She turned over Josephine’s palm and sat it face down on the table gently. She reached for her book with the palm on the front and flipped through the pages.

  “What is it? What do you see?” Josephine prodded.

  Adalaide refused to look up and focused on her book. When she found what she was searching for she stopped and mumbled to herself, nodding along as she read. When she had finally finished the passage she looked up at Josephine.

  She turned her palm face up again and spoke in hushed tones. “Josephine as you can see here, these little wisps away from your main line are near misses. Your whole life you have had the misfortune of being close to danger, but you have never fallen victim to it. The danger has always passed you by and left you unscathed.”

  “I like the sound of a little danger,” Josephine said with a flirty smile to me.

  “No, Josephine.” Adalaide said. “When we travel through life, we are only given a certain amount of luck and good fortune. It doesn’t go on forever. With all of these near misses you have needed and used so much luck.”

  “What are you sayin’?” Josephine asked no longer smiling.

  “I’m saying. Well. What I’m reading here. Is that you have just about used up all your luck and the next thing to come at you isn’t going to miss, nor is the thing after that or the one after that.”

  “So you’re saying I’m about to get a string of bad luck?” Josephine replied. “That don’t sound so bad.”

  Adalaide closed Josephine’s palm passed her back her drink and said, “Have a good night, Josephine, and enjoy your life.”

  I felt like she wanted to say, “what’s left of it,” but she didn’t. She merely closed the book, said sorry and turned away from the table. I could see a tear in the corner of her eye. She ran back before she could say anything more.

  I looked at Josephine waiting for her to say something. But instead she picked up the drink, downed the last of it and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s go find those boys.”

  “Well, what about what she just said?” I asked.

  “What?” Josephine replied. “She just got done tellin’ us she makes shit up when she doesn’t see anything.”

  “I didn’t think she looked like she was making anything up,” I replied.

  Josephine looked me in the eye and said, “Plenty of bad stuff has come my way. If she thinks I’ve missed all of it, she didn’t see a thing.”

  I was shocked by that statement. I never knew Josephine to have any trouble in life. Her parents were kind and her family was very well thought of. She always had a warm house and plenty of food. Her upbringing and mine couldn’t have been geographically any closer and yet any farther apart. If Josephine had any troubles she had never shared them with me.

  “What are you talking about, Josephine?” I asked.

  She placed her hand on my cheek and said, “Well nothin’ to rival your troubles, ma cher. So don’t worry yourself.”

  We left the pavilion and walked down the lantern-lit path to the small graveyard at the back of the property. The lights by the graveyard were low, and the civil war era tombstones were surrounded by fog from a smoke machine. Josephine stepped off of the lit path and into the graveyard towards a lantern off in the distance. Where she stepped, the fog whipped around her dress and up into the air around her. I followed her and held my hand out trying to feel the fog, but got nothing for my trouble.

  Josephine whispered as she walked, “Any spirits out here tonight?” She kept walking towards the light, passing the low broken tombstones as she went. When there was no reply she stopped and stood still. I followed her lead.

  “What are we doing?” I asked. “We’re listening for those boys. They are supposed to be out here as ghosts of the confederacy for the ghost story,” she replied.

  I stood still with her and heard rustling behind me. She heard it too but didn’t move.

  “Maybe it’s a rougarou?” I teased and she shushed me.

  She pointed out further in the distance. I lifted my foot to take a step and felt something grab my ankle and pull me down.

  I opened my mouth to scream but felt a strong hand clasp over my mouth before I could get out a peep. When I turned to see who had pulled me to the ground I found a baby-faced boy with broad shoulders and a gruesome looking head wound. I screamed through his hand, and then on closer inspection I saw that he was wearing a wool soldier’s uniform painted with far too much blood to be real. When he got a good look at my face he looked startled, let go and jumped to his feet.

  “Sorry, I thought you were Josephine,” he said holding out his hand.

  I took
his hand and stood up. Josephine was behind him laughing. After I was up he apologized again but quickly turned his attention to Josephine. He had a ferocious look on his face when he saw her. It was a look that I had seen many times when a man got Josephine in his sights.

  She smiled and batted her eyes at him. “What exactly did you think you would do with me down there?”

  He took quick steps to her and encircled her tiny waist with his hands before he said, “The same thing I’m going to do with you up here.”

  She looked up to him, giggled and licked her lips. He bent his head to her and met her lips with force. She moaned and he moved his hands up her corset, she slapped him on the wrist and he backed away from her. “What?”

  “You can’t open it from the front,” she scolded. He moved his hands behind her back working his hands to untie her corset.

  I decided it was time for me to make an exit and turned back to the path. When I looked forward I saw that the party goers had started to amass around the entrance of the graveyard. I turned and whispered as loud as I could in Josephine’s direction, “Josephine, we’ve got to go.”

  She didn’t respond, but I could still hear rustling in the distance. I walked towards the sound but I didn’t see anything. I looked to the ground, but instead of finding Josephine I found Jori at my feet. He too was sporting a massive fake head wound and motioned for me to come to the ground. I bent to him and asked, “Did you boys have fun with that fake blood?”

  He smiled, reached for his head, and said, “Yeah, I guess we got a little carried away.”

  I got on my knees beside him and said, “I’m looking for Josephine. The ghost hunt is starting and we need to get out of here. We’re going to mess it up.”

  He waved his hand to his right kicking up the fog, and we got a glimpse of Josephine and the boy soldier intertwined from the waist up. Her corset was nowhere to be seen.