Freebie: PIRATE'S ALLEY

“Pirate’s Alley” takes place in the world of Royal Street, first in the new Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series that will be released on April 10, 2012.

This story (Royal Street 0.5) takes place before the events of Royal Street.

 “Arrr, Matey, ask me who it is.” Megan leaned across the counter with a squinched eye and skewed mouth, trying—and failing—to look like a pirate chick. All it earned us was a few stares from the combination of business people and students stuffing down omelettes at the Camellia Grill. “Ask me who my guest is, Rhyn me girl, or I’ll lash ye to the mast.”

            I hunched over my plate and pretended not to know my roommate. Meg hadn’t shut up about “Talk Like a Pirate Day” for the last month, planning her big party and teasing at her special guest. I didn’t do pirates. And unless Orlando Bloom showed up in a blond wig and tights answering to the name Legolas, I didn’t care who her special guest was, either.

            New Orleans’ streetcars rumbled on the tracks behind us, and an occasional ship’s horn bellowed from the Mississippi River a block away. Black men in crisp white shirts and bow ties shouted to each other and bantered with customers across the counters as they flipped omelettes, fried bacon, and poured coffee.

            “I’m not going to beg you to tell me who your guest is.” I downed my last bite of egg and dabbed at my mouth with a napkin. “If you want to tell me, tell me. Otherwise, I’ve got a finance test next Wednesday and that’s my priority.”

            I’d put finance off till my last semester of grad school and time had run out. No finance, no MBA. I hated every second of it.

            “Pffft.” Meg grabbed both checks and slid off her stool. “It’s only Friday. Party’s on Sunday. That gives you plenty of time to study.”

            I shook my head and let Meg pay for breakfast. She could afford it. Scoffing at grad school, she’d gone straight to work after finishing at Tulane last year. She put her art degree to work designing floats at Mardi Gras World while I tried to understand the complexities of corporate finance.

            We walked to the corner and waited for the streetcar, Meg in a pout, hands stuffed in the pockets of her jeans.

            Finally, I gave in. “Okay, tell me about the special guest.”

            She feigned indifference for about three seconds before caving. “Remember I told you I’d been experimenting with”—her voice dipped to a stage whisper—“my gifts?”

            Good Lord. Meg fancied herself a witch or a warlock or some other kind of magic-wielding headcase. I’d never seen anything other than a good sense of intuition from her.

            “Yeah, so?”

            “So, I’ve figured out a way to summon Jean Lafitte—I mean the real Jean Lafitte, not an impersonator. Just think—New Orleans’ most famous pirate at our party!”

            “Your party.” I groaned inwardly. She’d finally gone insane, and her family lived in Massachusetts. That left me to call the little men in white coats and have her committed. If the little men wore bad pirate suits beneath those white coats, she’d probably go without a fight.

            “Meg.” I kept my voice reasonable, as if this weren’t the most ridiculous conversation in history. “Jean Lafitte has been dead for, God, at least two hundred years.” Arguably New Orleans’ most infamous citizen in the city’s long history of infamy, Lafitte had torn up the waters of Southeast Louisiana before the War of 1812, if I remembered my history lessons. “And he was a real pirate. I mean, he, like, killed people. Not exactly my idea of a party favor.”

            She waved me off, climbing the steps into the streetcar and dropping her coins in the box. “That was just bad PR.”

            I slid in the seat next to her. “Bad PR? Well, jeez, too bad Jean Lafitte couldn’t hire a decent publicist.”

            “Look, I’ve read up on him, okay? He was the gentleman pirate. Really smart. He had pirate flunkies to do all the dirty work.”

            We swayed as the streetcar made its sharp turn from Carrollton onto St. Charles Avenue and rumbled toward Tulane. “Great. He won’t kill you himself—he’ll just order someone else to do it.”

            Why was I arguing with her? It’s not like she could really summon Jean Lafitte.

2

At five until midnight, I sat at the kitchen table eating chips and drinking a bottle of Abita Amber. A used copy of Applied Computational Economics lay open in front of me, a yellow highlighter abandoned next to it.

            “Can you help me with this?” Meg’s face had turned bright red from exertion. For the past hour, she’d methodically gone through the living room, moving furniture against the far wall. Her blonde hair had mostly escaped its braid and fell in her eyes as she tried to inch the heavy sofa against the right-hand wall. I’d always envied her hair, but my short cut that Mom said made me look like a waif was easier.

            I helped her move the sofa, and turned to look at the wide, empty patch of wooden flooring. “What’s next?”

            “Just sit back and watch.” Her eyes sparkled as she drew a large circle on the floor with chalk, then gathered candles, placed them around the circle, and lit them.

            She looked at an open book on the kitchen counter before placing more items around the circle—a knife, a pinch of salt, a plastic alligator from a strand of Mardi Gras beads.

            “Where did you get this?” I flipped the book to look at its title: Simple Summonry. Its cover had once been leather, but now was more like straggling wisps of tanned paper.

            “Estate sale—some old creepy mansion down on Esplanade.”

            I shook my head. “Meg, what makes you think this will work?” She’d be bitching about it for a month when it didn’t.

            She grinned. “What makes you think it won’t?”

            Throwing my hands up in surrender, I grabbed my textbook and headed for the bedroom. “Call me when the pirate shows up.”

            I was already deep into the snore-inducing world of macroeconomic modeling when I heard the bedroom door open. Bookmarking my spot, I closed the book and pushed my desk chair back. “Finally giving up? Need me to help move the furniture back?”

            The harsh whisper didn’t sound like Meg. “Rhyn, you better come out here.”

            I turned to look at her. Her face was an eggshell-white oval punctuated with wide blue eyes. Frightened eyes. My heart rate sped. “What is it?”

            She shook her head, her mouth opening and closing like a fish that had found itself inexplicably in the bottom of a boat with a hook in its mouth.

            Pushing past her, I walked down the short hallway to the living room and froze.

            A man stood in the circle. A tall, handsome man with dark, wavy hair, broad shoulders, and deep blue eyes. A scar on his jaw. Hands propped on his hips. A glare on his face.

            Pointing at us, he shouted something in French, his voice a deep baritone. Then he glared some more.

            I turned back to Meg with raised eyebrows, the question unnecessary.

            “I think it’s him,” she whispered. “Jean Lafitte.”

            “You foolish trollops. It is my wish for you to break this circle immediately.”

            We turned back to stare at him as his voice softened into a soft flurry of French. He mumbled to himself, feeling his way around an invisible cylinder that seemed to have him trapped inside. He looked like a big, pissed-off mime.

            “I don’t know how to get rid of him,” Meg whispered.

            I turned on her, my voice rising into a squeak. “What do you mean you don’t know how to get rid of him? What does the book say?”

            I grabbed it off the counter and flipped frantically through the pages, only to find the last chapter missing—the pages appeared to have been hastily ripped out, bits of ragged paper hanging from the binding. “Why didn’t you make sure you had the whole book before you did this?” My voice came out in a hiss.

            A single tear escaped and streamed down Meg's cheek; she had folded in on herself, her arms clutching her middle. “I didn’t really think it would work. I thought it—”

            “What are your names?”

            We whirled at the deep, masculine voice. Jean Lafitte—if that’s really who it was (could it really be?)—stood in the circle with his arms crossed, stance wide. He had an enormous pistol with a curved handle tucked into his belt, which cinched his loose white tunic at his hips. Knee-high boots and black pants completed the pirate look.

            Meg walked toward him, gulping in deep breaths. Damn right. It was her mess. Let her deal with it. “I’m Meg, and”—she thumbed over her shoulder at me—“this is Rhyn. Are you really him? Jean Lafitte?”

            He cocked his head, a smile quirking up one corner of his mouth. “Oui, Mademoiselle Meg.” He held his hand out as if to shake hers.

            “Meg—no!” I screeched, watching in horror as she stuck out her hand and broke the cylinder. When had Meg turned stupid? Every ridiculous witch movie she’d ever made me watch was clear on the whole “no breaking a summoning circle” thing.

            Lafitte took her hand and lifted it to his, brushing the back of her knuckles with a kiss, then swept past her with long strides, exploring the apartment, opening doors. He stopped suddenly and turned back to us, rooted to our same spots as if we’d been stuck to the floor with Superglue, mouths agape. “What hour is it?”

            Meg looked blank, so I glanced at my watch. “It’s after two. In the morning.”

            “Might I procure transportation? I can exchange something for it.” He reached in a pouch attached to his belt and shook it--it sounded as if it were full of coins. “I wish to exchange this for passage to a location outside the city. We have little time.”

            I’d never seen Meg so shaken. She seemed incapable of speech.  “Why do you need money?” I asked. “We need to send you back where you came from, not take you somewhere else.” Speaking of which. “Where did you come from?”

            I should have kept my mouth shut. Lafitte’s blue eyes latched onto me. “Pardon, mademoiselle... You are a woman, yes? With the hair so short I am unsure...” He raked his eyes over my cropped T-shirt and khaki shorts, pausing at my legs, rising to study the tiny silver ring in my exposed belly button, and coming to rest at chest level. I had an annoying urge to comb my hair and explain that I normally dressed better, even though that wasn’t true. I was mortified.

            “Most fascinating,” he said. “We shall discuss this further. After I tend to business. You must provide me with some currency, if not transportation.”
            “Does this look like a bank?” I snapped, thinking macroeconomic theory sounded really fascinating about now.

            Lafitte walked toward me slowly, predatory, and I swallowed the golfball-sized lump of fear in my throat.

            I closed my eyes as he neared, the power oozing from him and brushing across my skin. The door rattled, then clicked shut.
            By the time I’d turned around, he was gone. What an idiot. It hadn’t been power wafting across my skin; it was the air he’d stirred up breezing past me.

            “Oh, thank God, he’s gone.” Meg sat on the floor with a thud.

            I stared at her. “What do you mean, thank God he’s gone?” My voice cracked. “We just let freakin’ pirate Jean Lafitte out to walk around the French Quarter on a Friday night! He’ll rob somebody, or kill them, or, or, or, pillage. You have to go after him.”

            “Are you nuts?” Meg rubbed her eyes. “I’m going to throw that stupid book away and go to bed. Wait.” She sat up. “Do you realize what this means? We can summon anybody! Maybe we could get Marie Laveau for Halloween—do a whole voodoo priestess theme.”

            My anger rose sharp and hot, and I shoved the book from the counter into the trash can, grabbed my purse, and headed for the door.

            “Where are you going?” Meg got to her feet.

            “I’m going to find Jean Lafitte before he kills somebody and it’s our fault,” I shouted. “Make that your fault.” I let the door slam behind me, and took the steps two at a time.

3

I let myself out the courtyard gate and sent frantic looks up and down Royal Street. Where would I go if I were a 200-year-old pirate suddenly loosed upon the world, intent on rape and murder?

            I headed for Bourbon Street.

            Hurrying along the sidewalks of lower Bourbon, I finally reached the touristy part that stretched between St. Louis Cathedral and Canal Street. The perfect spot for piratical crimes.

            It might be mid-September, but New Orleans clung to summer and sweat ran down my back. I broke into a run until I reached the touristed areas, where the bars and restaurants sent trills of sound ringing brashly into the thick night air. I hadn’t gone half a block before I spotted him, looking in a store window and laughing.

            He moved on and I followed, trying to dodge a clump of tourists moving en masse down the street. By the time I untangled myself from them, I’d lost him again. Slowing, I glanced in the shop window he’d been studying with such amusement a few moments earlier (sex toys, OMG), then continued a slow walk, checking out open storefronts along the way, hoping to glimpse him again.

            I’d reached the 500 block of Royal when I was jerked sideways into an alley between two buildings and found myself pinned to the aging brick wall by a big, grinning pirate.

            “You would make a poor spy, mademoiselle,” he said, and from my up-close vantage point, his size and strength were overwhelming. He smelled of tobacco and cinnamon.

            I tried to slow my heart down, to not sound like a breathy, chickenshit MBA student. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt anybody.” He was essentially a ghost, right? Why did he feel so damned solid and warm?

            “And why would I hurt anyone, little… Repeat your name, s’il vous plait?”

            I considered telling him it was Meg. “Rhyn,” I whispered. “Kathryn.”

            He stepped back and I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to run. But I couldn’t leave him wandering around on his own. I needed to find out how to send him back to wherever he came from, and the only way was to weasel the info out of him.

            “Kathryn, why did your friend, the cowardess, summon me?” he asked. “To what ends did she intend to use me?”

            God, how stupid was this going to sound? “She, uh, just wanted to take you to her ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ party.” I paused, then added, “I think she expected someone…  smaller.”

            He shook his head and muttered, “Les jeunes femmes insenses.”

            I’d been called worse than a foolish young woman, so I let it slide. At least he wasn’t pissed off anymore. “Where is it you want to go exactly?” I asked.

             “Do you know the home of Jean Noel Destrehan? I must get there before the wizards come to send me back.”

            I couldn’t process wizards, so I focused on Destrehan. “There’s a suburb called Destrehan,” I said, thinking. “And there’s the Destrehan Plantation.” In fact, if I lived through this, I’d be going to the annual fall festival there in a few weeks.

            Lafitte’s eyes widened. “La maison,” he breathed. “The house… it still stands?”

            “Well, if you mean Destrehan Plantation, yes.”

            “You will take me there now.” He clamped a big, strong hand around my wrist and pulled me out of the alley, taking long strides down Bourbon in the direction we’d come from. I had to trot to avoid being dragged down the street on my chin.

            An NOPD officer stood on an adjacent corner, and I considered screaming for help. But what would I tell him? I was being dragged through the French Quarter by the corporeal ghost of Jean Lafitte? We’d both spend the night in lockup and he didn’t seem interested in raping or pillaging me—probably because I looked poor and he wasn’t completely sure I was a girl.

            “Wait!” I planted my feet and tugged him to a stop. “I don’t have a car. I can’t take you to Destrehan. Plus it’s the middle of the night. It will be closed. If we took a taxi it would look suspicious.”

            “I do not need to go inside.” We were only a couple of blocks from the river, and the sound of a ship’s horn echoed through the Quarter. Jean turned to me with a smile. “Do you possess a vessel? We might sail there.”

             “Do I look like I have a vessel?” Sure, I docked it near Audubon Park, near my collection of sports cars.

            “Bah. Useless woman.” Lafitte turned and strode toward Decatur Street and the river, drunken tourists instinctively moving out of his way and more than a few women taking a second look. Good Lord. He’d be off stealing one of the French Quarter carriages if I didn’t get him under control.

            “Wait for me!” I ran after him.

            He stopped and looked back at me. “My apologies, mademoiselle, but I do not have time for an assignation”—he swept those intense blue eyes over me again, stopping on my legs—“as enjoyable as that might be.”

            “I don’t want to…” I sputtered, heat spreading across my face. “I’ll take you to Destrehan if you promise to go back where you came from afterward.”

            He grinned. “Tres bien, Mademoiselle Kathryn. Lead me to your horse.”

4

I maneuvered Meg’s aging VW Beetle—a mottled, sickly color that had once been yellow—along the winding curves of Jefferson Highway, driving the ghost of Jean Lafitte to Destrehan Plantation. He sat in the passenger seat, long legs almost bumping his chin as we rattled along. Meg, not surprisingly, had refused to come with us.

            Lafitte wasn’t complaining about the cramped quarters but, rather, watched the passing scenery and my operation of the manual transmission with equal fascination.

            And the man—ghost, spirit, whatever—wouldn’t shut up.

            “Tell me the meaning of these red and green lights that hang over the road. Where is the river in relation to our location? Who is this Burger King—does he rule New Orleans? Are there still fortunes to be made from profiteering?”

            I answered the ones I could. “Explain how profiteering works.”

            “I procure goods and sell them to local merchants for a lower cost than they are able to obtain them elsewhere,” he said.

            “Supply and demand, undercutting the competition. It’s good business.” I nodded. Sound economic theory. “So, what kind of goods are you interested in procuring, and how do you get them?” Were there ghost-driven supply chains in his world?

            “Tobacco, spices, spirits, even”—he reached over and jerked the T-shirt down to bare my shoulder, peering down the neck and almost making me drive the bug into the side of an overpass—“personal items for ladies. As for where we obtain our goods, that is primarily from Spanish vessels, whose crews are evil scoundrels unfit to live even in hell itself.”

            Right, forgot for a moment—pirate. Evil Spaniards. Thank God I came from good Irish stock.

            A Jefferson Parish sheriff’s cruiser slowed as it passed us and I held my breath, praying we wouldn’t be stopped. Beside me, Lafitte pulled that bigass pistol from beneath his tunic, where he’d at least had the good sense to tuck it before parading down Bourbon Street.

            We stopped at a red light and he eyed the deputy in the adjacent car, who eyed him back. “Should I kill him?” Lafitte asked, much as one might ask for the salt and pepper.

            Oh. My. God. “No! Don’t even look at him. Put that thing away and don’t shoot anyone or I won’t take you anywhere.” Jeez-Louise.

            He raised an eyebrow as if to say what we both knew—that if he chose to shoot anyone, including me, I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop him.

            “Please?” I said.

            “Bah. Very well.” He tucked the pistol away and pulled a long knife from his boot instead.

            If I lived through this, Meg was so dead.

5

I parked the Beetle a ways down River Road from the plantation house and followed Jean Lafitte on foot as he strode across the grounds, keeping himself hidden behind the trees. Guess he had plenty of experience at skulking.

            He paused next to the small building that housed the gift shop, drawn by something in the window. I huffed up next to him and followed his gaze to a small painting—of himself, according to the plaque beneath it. The artist had missed the mark, badly. The painted Jean Lafitte had a nose hooked like a boomerang, small beady black eyes, a bad do-rag covering his head, and a knife clutched between his teeth.

            I waited for him to curse, or shout, or break the window—something to show his dismay at being turned from a handsome man into an ugly caricature. Instead, he chuckled and moved away, back into the shadows. “It is good to be remembered, is it not?”

            “Oh, you’re remembered,” I said. “I grew up in Lafitte, Louisiana—it’s southwest of here, near Barataria.”

            He stopped and turned so quickly I ran into him. “You will take me there in your wheeled horse next, yes?”

            That was so not happening.

            But what was I going to do with him? He claimed Meg had summoned him from “the Beyond,” whatever that meant. Heaven? Hell? The planet Zoltan?

            We were well behind the plantation house now, and my eyes had adjusted to the moonlight filtering among the trees. The sky felt bigger out here. I’d forgotten how many stars there were once you left the city lights behind.

            Lafitte had stopped a few yards ahead of me, and was looking at the trees. He ran his hands along the bark of one, then another—circling them, reading their textures with his fingers as if scanning a text in braille.

            “What are you looking for?” I whispered, creeped out by the hooting of an owl, the sound of the wind, the sound of a ship’s horn wafting down the river—even as I realized those things shouldn’t scare me nearly as bad as the fact that I’d driven a pirate’s ghost across three Louisiana parishes in the dead of night.

            He ignored me, placing his back at the last tree he’d found and pacing away from it.

            Twenty steps, and then he stopped, knelt, and used his knife to start digging into the soil.

            “You have buried treasure here?” I envisioned a trunk full of gold and gems, antique coins that would be worth a fortune today. The pirate Lafitte was rumored to have buried treasure all over South Louisiana, but no one had ever found any.

            “Only a small bit,” he said. “In my day, one never knew when one might need some…. Bah, I do not know the phrase.”

            “Getaway money?” I ventured.

            He laughed. “Oui, money in order to ‘get away,’ as you say. But even in the Beyond, one can make use of gold.”

            I dropped to my knees facing him, pulled a pen knife from my purse, and helped him dig. We worked in silence until, finally, I struck a solid object. “I have something.”

            Moving aside, I let him ply his knife to my side of the excavation, and he grinned. “Voila!” He pulled a small glass container from the earth and gently wiped the wet soil away from it. Pulling off its stopper-like lid, he reached inside and took out one of many coins—it was filled with them. He rubbed the coin on his thigh, back and forth, and then held it up for me to see. Even in the moonlight, it picked up a gleam.

            “Gold, Kathryn. It is still valued in your time, yes?”

            “Oh, yes,” I said, transfixed. My hand trembled as I took the coin from him and ran my fingers across its surface. It was too dark to tell what was printed on it, but it was old and it was gold.

            “Well, this looks like a most profitable trip you two have made.”

            I squeaked and fell on my backside at the booming voice behind us, its accent clipped and decidedly British.

            Lafitte rose to his feet. “Monsieur St. Simon. I wondered how long it would be before the wizards sent their chien de chasse along to fetch me. You are growing slower, mon ami. Perhaps you should leave such work to a younger man—or woman. Is not your assistant a lovely young female?”

            Ignoring Lafitte, the newcomer held out a hand to me and I scrambled away from him. “Come on, girl. I just want to help you up.”

            “Who are you?” I whispered.

            The man smiled. He looked to be in his late forties, with silver hair, pale eyes, and expensive-looking clothes—modern clothes. “I’m Gerry St. Simon, the sentinel for the New Orleans region. It’s my job to return interlopers like Captain Lafitte here to the Beyond, and make sure sixth-sensers like you don’t remember meeting him. How did you summon him? For the love of God, why did you summon him?”

            “It wasn’t me, it was my roommate,” I said, climbing to my feet without his help. I remembered something Lafitte had said earlier. “Oh my God. You’re a wizard?”

6

Meg and I walked in silence to Café du Monde for our regular Saturday-morning fix of beignets and coffee. I still wore the clothes I’d had on yesterday, even though I didn’t remember going to bed.

            I did remember dreaming, though. “I’ll be glad when Talk Like a Pirate Day is over.” I tapped the powdered sugar off the beignet into my coffee. “I freakin’ dreamed about Jean Lafitte last night.”

            Meg laughed. “So did I, and then I dreamed some middle-aged guy brought you home in the dead of night and did some kind of hocus-pocus on us.”

            That sounded kind of familiar to me, too, but as soon as I tried to remember it, to put a face on it, the wisp of memory slipped away. I needed caffeine, badly.

            “You still going to try and summon Jean Lafitte?” I asked, hoping Meg had changed her mind.

            She shook her head and took a loud slurp of coffee. “No, that was a stupid idea. Funny thing, though. I can’t find the summoning book. Do you remember seeing it?”

            I tried to remember but for the life of me, the whole evening was a blur. Proof that macroeconomics are bad for the brain.

            We pushed our chairs back and Meg wove through the crowds of people already lining up for a chance at one of the small café tables. I held back, digging in my jeans pockets for tip money. I pulled out a large round coin, its edges slightly irregular. On the front was a man’s head, the date 1800, and some words in Spanish.

            I pressed hands against my suddenly throbbing temples, trying to pin down flashing images of digging in the soil at night, a strange man, a glass jar. But the memory, idea—whatever it was—disappeared as quickly as it came.

            I didn’t know where the coin came from, or how I got it, but it was all the change I had. Shrugging, I tossed it on the table as a tip and ran to catch up with Meg.

Copyright 2011 Suzanne Johnson

May not be reproduced without permission.