Haunted Destiny: A Midnight Dragonfly Bonus Short Story (2 page)

Harmony flipped the page, and stilled. The wind kept whipping around us, though, sending stringy blond hair against eyes that had suddenly gone midnight dark.

And I knew what she was looking at.

Chapter 3

“Your mom,” she whispered.

My eyes filled.

“She was so pretty,” she murmured with a sad smile. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did she come to you in a dream or something?”

Sheltered by an umbrella, I reached for the tablet, and this time Harmony let me have it.

“I like to think so,” I said. It would explain why I’d felt so warm before I woke up, in those hazy foggy moments before I’d sat up in bed and found the sketch on the floor.

Her hair was long and wind-swept, tangling around her face and falling wildly against a pink tank top. Her mouth was full, her eyes tilted, like mine. And with them, I knew she had seen far too much.

Like me.

“My mom dreams about her, too,” Harmony said as I stared at the dragonfly pendant glowing against her chest. “She still misses her a lot.”

So did I. Fifteen years had passed since she’d drowned. I’d been two years old. She’d been only nineteen. I had no real memories of her, but somehow I knew her.

That was radically different from my father, whom I’d never known. I’d asked questions, but no one would answer them, not even the grandmother who’d raised me. It was like I was an immaculate conception, except for the fact that that ridiculous.

“What’s trinity?” she asked.

I looked at the single word, written lovingly in a beautiful calligraphy-like cursive—one I’d been unable to repeat, despite trying. “I have no idea.”

Harmony shrugged. “Do you think she was trying to warn you about something?” she asked. “Maybe that’s why—”

I shot her a look only a best friend can get away with. “Harmony?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

She grinned. “Just trying to put it all together.”

“Stop.”

Her grin softened. “Maybe I should find someone else for the tour,” she said, glancing toward the plaza in front of the beautiful old cathedral, where Dominic and Esmerelda usually set up.

We were the only ones sitting in the rain.

“With all this weird stuff, I’m not sure tonight’s the night you should be leading a tour—”

“Stop,” I said again, swooping up her script and shoving it into my bag. “You broke your ankle. I’m your best friend. I said yes.” Actually, I’d jumped at the chance. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be—and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

It was probably the one thing I’d learned about destiny. You couldn’t run from it. You couldn’t hide.

Somehow that just made things worse. Destiny had a plan of her own.

With another ridiculous gust of warm air, the rain turned to a downpour. “Who knows,” Harmony said, scrambling to pack away her cards. “Maybe no one will even show up.”

I hurried to slide an arm around her as she stood. Crutches were not going to work in this rain. “Maybe,” I said, supporting her as we dashed toward Desiree and her vacant-eyed dolls.

But even as I said the words, I knew they were wrong.

I was right. The hurricane continued to churn east toward Alabama, spreading intermittent rain showers across southern Louisiana as feeder bands swept in from the Gulf of Mexico.

But at four o’clock I still had three people waiting at the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Jackson Street. Six had been scheduled, but the rest were no-shows, leaving me with a married couple from California and an English writer eager to research our Cities of the Dead for a book about a secret society of Immortals.

Her name was Naomi, and like the Hoods from San Francisco, she was all about the rain. Every time lightning broke the eerie late afternoon darkness or thunder shook the old houses, she smiled and opened her arms, and in her very beautiful, aristocratic accent, exclaimed, ‘Brilliant!’

I liked all of them from the moment I walked up, and any anxiety I had about giving my first tour faded.

Despite the rain and slightly cooler temps, everyone agreed they wanted the full tour, no shortcuts. So bundled in rain-jackets with umbrellas in hand, we took off, walking along the broken sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue, where beautiful old mansions slept much as they had for hundreds of years, and equally old trees served as perpetual umbrellas.

Parked cars lined the street, but very few passed alongside us. Even the streetcar was stashed somewhere for the storm. I knew everyone was eager to get to the cemetery, but Harmony insisted it was best to let suspense and anticipation build. It was that whole drama thing.

“The stories are many, the tales as varied as the spirits themselves,” I began we passed a gorgeous old concrete statue of the Virgin Mary cradling an infant. “But most would agree our most famous ghost is but a young girl.”

The excitement glowing in everyone’s eyes spurred me on.

“Long ago, when the Garden District was little more than a sugar cane field, a family came to visit friends. The adults busied themselves doing what adults do, drinking and catching up. It wasn’t until sometime late that they realized their daughter, Sara, had wandered off.

“It took over a week before they found her body in the sugar cane field.”

Standing statue-still beneath their respective umbrellas, Mr. and Mrs. Hood exchanged a brief somber look.

“Some say she’s still here,” I said, leading them toward a beautiful old Victorian home, where an older woman sat alone in a rocking chair on her veranda.

“Many have seen her, sometimes walking right through their house. Others say they hear her calling for her mother. But only by day.

“Sara never comes out at night.”

Another gust whipped in, delivering a fresh onslaught of horizontal rain. “Tragic,” Naomi murmured.

The Hoods remained silent.

Leaning into the wind, I led them onto Harmony Street and picked up the pace. (Yes, Harmony Street. My friend was totally born to do this gig. Lots of people thought Harmony was a made-up name, like Marguerite. But she’d been given that name at birth, by her mother—Faith. True story.)

“I participated in a marvelous French Quarter tour last night,” Naomi said. Soaked despite her umbrella, her dark brown hair was slicked back from her face, making her eyes looked even bigger. “We walked by a particular house on Royal Street, where I was informed a woman kept people chained in the attic! I can hardly even fathom. Are there any stories like that here?”

Her accent and word choice made me smile.

“Lots!” I said, guiding them onto Prytania. Lafayette Cemetery was only a few blocks away. “Many of these houses have stood for over two hundred years.”

“Which means they’re
haunted
,” Mrs. Hood gushed.

Her husband slid an arm around her, drawing her close against him. “Dawn has a thing for ghosts.”

She grinned.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Chapter 4

I couldn’t breathe.

The sensation gripped me, like being held, but not in a good way. The weight from before, the unseen force that had been pressing against my chest all day, turned into a straitjacket, wrapping around me, and squeezing. The warm rain kept falling and the tropical air continued to bend young trees to the point of breaking, but I couldn’t feel any of that, only icy cold fingers closing around my throat.

“Marguerite!” Mr. Hood rushed over and took me by the arms, shaking me slightly.

I blinked and stared, tried to bring him into focus. But for the craziest second, all I could think was…
run
.

Mrs. Hood and Naomi crowded up behind him. “Is she quite all right?”

We meet again…

I ripped away and staggered back. But it wasn’t Mr. Hood that I stared at. It was the mansion. Big and boxy and covered by vines of bougainvillea, it sat back from the street, barely visible through the frame of moss-covered oaks. The front porch sagged. Dark windows stared like the sightless eyes of Desiree’s dolls.

“Ohhh, it’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it?” Naomi murmured.

“Something bad happened here, didn’t it?” Mrs. Hood realized. “That’s why you’re so pale.”

Don’t be afraid…

The huge, dark coil inside me tightened. I wanted to rip away and run, even as I wanted to step closer, and
see.
Touch.

Feel.

It made no sense.

“There
are
stories,” I said, tightening my fingers around my umbrella. Harmony had told me. She’d been to this house several times, as recently as the weekend before. She’d been inside, explored every room. She said it was amazing, beautiful but sad, as if life had moved on and forgotten, but that the house remembered.

Everything.

Whatever had happened there still happened, over and over, an invisible movie trapped on eternal repeat.

“The house dates back before the Civil War,” I recited. “Built by a sugar baron as gift for his wife.” I took a step back, as if I could pull myself far enough back, the web would release me. “But as so often happened, she never lived to see it complete.”

“I saw in some documentary that many of the mansions ended up occupied by Union soldiers,” Mr. Hood said.

“They did,” I said. “As did the White Jewel—that’s what the house was known as back then.
Bijou Blanche
. The Union soldiers turned it into a field hospital.”

Mrs. Hood gasped.

Naomi stepped closer, lifting a hand to the shoulder-high iron-gate surrounding the property. Even in its current state of neglect, the huge red hibiscus blooming profusely lent a haunting beauty.

“Years went by. The house was purchased by a merchant and his wife, who died shortly after they moved in. He lived out his years there, alone, until he drank himself to death, leaving the property to his daughter and her husband.”

Mrs. Hood shot me a nervous glance.

“Richard was also a merchant and traveled for months at a time, leaving Adelaide home alone. One morning a neighbor was pruning her roses when she heard screams.” I paused, swallowing against a strange burn in my throat. “And then a pregnant Adelaide came running from the house.”

The web gripping me locked tighter.

“In a night dress of white,” I whispered hoarsely. “Streaked with red.”

Mrs. Hood winced.

“The neighbor tried to approach her, but she was wild and incoherent, her face scratched up, her eyes like dark pools, her hair falling in matted tangles, and before the neighbor could stop her, Adelaide had run off.”

The rain slowed, slipping like tears down a crumbling statue of an angel, standing in the exact spot where Adelaide had last been seen.

“The police were called. Inside they found everything in perfect order—except for one room.
A secret room
,” I said lowering my voice. “Upstairs, at the end of the hall—where the Union soldiers had piled their dead.”

Despite the drizzle, Naomi lifted her camera and started to snap like crazy.

“What was in the room?”

I heard Mr. Hood’s voice, but it came at me through a distorted tunnel.

“According to the police?” I mused. “Only an overturned chair. Maybe she fell, they speculated. Maybe she hit her head and became disoriented.” For effect, I paused. “That could explain the broken glass,” I murmured. “But not the gouges.”

The odd combination of rain and shadow and light from the street lamps made Mrs. Hood’s dark brown eyes glow. “Gouges?”

“On the floorboard and the walls,” I said, trancelike. “Deep and rough and frantic, like those of a trapped animal, thrashing and clawing, desperate for escape. There are those who say the whole room bled.

“But those who were there, those who claimed to know someone who knew someone, said it was the smell that turned the veteran cop white as a ghost, and sent him straight to his priest,” I whispered. “Pungent and earthy.
Not human
.”

Naomi released the fence and stepped disjointedly back. I could see that she was shaking.

“Adelaide’s husband returned from sea a few days later, and refused to believe that she was gone. He insisted he heard her, at night, crying for him. And he smelled the gardenia that she always wore. It is said he would run from room to room, throwing open doors and lighting candles—searching.

“His friends and family said that was the absinthe he’d turned to, slowly rotting his brain.”

“I’ll never let you go…”

I jerked back, twisting toward Mr. Hood. But he had his wife in his arms, and they were murmuring quietly to each other while Naomi wandered toward the angel statue.

There was no one else there.

I shivered, like I had so many other times since arriving in New Orleans. It wasn’t called the most haunted city in America for nothing.

“He’s still there, isn’t he?” Naomi asked, lowering her camera. “Waiting for his wife.”

“There are those who say on a quiet still night you can still hear doors opening and closing,” I whispered, as against my chest, warmth radiated from my mother’s dragonfly pendant. “And footsteps running.”

Maybe that’s why my heart started to drum really hard, because of the tragedy of it all, of fate and eternity and all those empty dark spaces in between.