Moon Bayou (Samantha Moon Case Files Book 1) Read online

  The train to New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern had sleeper cars, but they had sold out of first-class tickets before we got there. That left us with third class, which meant we had to sit on hard wooden benches, and the train was slow. Excruciatingly slow. Like thirty miles per hour going downhill on a straightaway—which pretty much saved us from being shaken to death. Even so, it made me motion-sick… and I don’t usually get motion sick.

  When we arrived in Jackson, the train stopped, and all the passengers got out to have lunch in the station. We stopped again an hour later in Canton, where the conductors delayed the train for us so we could show the stationmaster our daguerreotype of Lalie along with a lithograph of Lyons Hart taken from the Daily Crescent.

  He shook his head.

  “Well, never mind,” I said to Dr. James, who looked increasingly gloomy. “Let’s press on to Memphis. I think the riverboat’s even more likely. That steamboat agent guy seemed pretty sure it was them.”

  “If so, so much the worse,” he said. “Ships’ captains may perform weddings.”

  I could tell he was gonna be great company the rest of the way.

  Just north of Grenada, the train struck a farm cart and one of the rear cars derailed. This delayed us enough so that when we finally arrived in Memphis after midnight, we found out we’d missed the SS Kate Frisbee by an hour. We had to spend the night on a bench in the station, interrupted by crews of navies passing through on their way to build a rail extension to Fort Smith.

  “By this time next year, you may be able to take a train from here all the way to Albuquerque and Los Angeles,” said Dr. James, his Scottish accent murdering the names of the two towns. “Think on that—you’ll be able to return to your home without the month-long voyage through the Isthmus.”

  “It won’t be the same,” I said. I guess he assumed I meant because my husband was dead.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Moon, will your need for sustenance trouble you on this excursion? How often do you need to feed?” I couldn’t tell whether his interest was scientific, or whether he was afraid I might plunge my teeth into his throat at any moment.

  “Don’t worry. I can go for about five days without it.” Of course, five days would be pushing it. I preferred every other day. The bitch inside me preferred a virgin a night. That’s not happening.

  “Do you think this… Lyons Hart gangrel might be the murderer of our victim from yesterday? One of your kind, if I may speak plain?” That explained why Dr. James seemed so frightened; he worried about more than Lalie’s precious virginity. He suspected the actor was a vampire.

  “What’s a gangrel?” I asked curiously.

  “A sort of tramp, a shiftless vagrant fellow. It’s Scots.”

  “No, I’ve met him, he’s not ‘one of my kind.’ We always recognize each other. Besides, he goes out in the daylight.”

  “But you go out in the daylight.”

  “Not if I can help it.” I laughed. “And I carry a parasol when I do. Besides, I’m exceptional.”

  The next train didn’t arrive till noon; we boarded it, feeling tired and dirty for the half day’s journey north to Columbus, where we were supposed to take a ferry up to Cairo to catch the Illinois Central to St. Louis. There was no direct link between the Great Northern and the Yankee railroads, the conductor explained, because they used different track gauges. Naturally, the ferry got stuck and we missed the train out of Cairo, so we arrived late the next day in St. Louis.

  A headline caught my eye as soon as we got off the train at the station. Someone had posted it on the wall. On the front page of that day’s Daily Missouri Republican: ‘Noted Thespian Dies on River.’ The article said that Edwin Lyons Hart, the illegitimate son of the even more famous English actor Quintus Curtius Lyons Hart, had fallen ill from drinking muddy river water soon after leaving New Orleans and died of fever the night before aboard the SS Kate Frisbee. His body had been brought ashore to the Drury Inn by his ‘grieving young widow.’

  We rushed there and found Lalie red-eyed with weeping, but otherwise healthy, and totally unsurprised to see us. I guess she assumed the world revolved around her at that age. Dr. James left it to me to comfort her and then tell her the bad news about her so-called husband’s funny little habit; you know, of marrying a new chick in every city, pretty much.

  “You mean… our wedding wasn’t legal?” she kept saying, over and over. When she finally got it, she burst into tears. “You don’t understand, Sam… I’ve missed my monthly course. I’m enceinte.” Her face flamed the color of a fire hydrant. “With child,” she whispered.

  “Huh?” I said. “You’ve only been gone three days!”

  “Yes, but… but I gave him my all soon after we met. He said that a virgin never conceives the first time. Now I’m disgraced—utterly ruined!” She started howling like a three-year-old. “Oh, poor Papa! I’ve brought such shame to him!”

  I sighed. I really hoped Tammy never gave me this much trouble someday. Although, knowing her, no boy would ever be able to take advantage of her. She’d read him like a book.

  “Look, Lalie, just calm down. I’ll have a talk with your dad first and maybe he’ll be okay with it. You never know; he’s a real maverick. He really loves you—you should have seen how upset he was on Thursday when he found out. I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy to have you back safe and sound under any circumstances. You’ll see.”

  She gave a loud sniff. “You really think so?”

  “Sure I do,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. Finally, after I got her to bed and half-asleep, I went downstairs and met Dr. James in the lounge. While I’d been calming Lalie down, he’d walked over to the steamship office and, by bribing the night watchman to open up, had bought three tickets for the return home tomorrow morning.

  “You’ll only need two,” I said. “You can cash the third one back in tomorrow.”

  The hotel had a bar, but women couldn’t go in there, so the doctor brought two glasses of scotch to our table.

  “Now, normally,” said Dr. James, “I don’t hold with strong drink—or ladies drinking at all—but I reckon we both need a good shot after this.” He held his glass up in toast. “For medicinal purposes, of course.”

  “Medicinal purposes,” I replied, tapping rims.

  “Sláinte,” he said, and took a big sip.

  I’d heard all about the hell of the riverboat journey from Lalie, and I didn’t have the least interest in doing the third-world tourist thing. Apparently, it was nothing like Showboat. The ship had no private cabins—all the women aboard had to share a single saloon with their beds curtained off. They had no commodes, she said; if you wanted to do your business, you just did it over the side like the deckhands or slaves. You could only eat or drink when the steamboat docked, because it carried no food or fresh water aboard. Hence, how Edwin had died: he’d drunk up all the wine and thought the river water would be harmless, since he’d seen some slaves drinking it.

  Dr. James was astounded. “But how will you get home, ma’am? I hardly think a lady by herself on the railroad—”

  “I’ll be fine. Look, Dr. James—you only know half my secret. The fact is, my condition, as you call it, gives me certain other perks. Like… flying. I’ll just fly home and meet you there.”

  I realized I’d actually said ‘home,’ without even thinking about it. Well, it might have been a backwards shithole by modern standards, but New Orleans sure was a heck of a lot more beautiful and fun to live in than any of the other towns I’d seen on this trip. And I must have grown pretty attached to the Macartys, I guess. Of course, no one could ever take the place in my heart of Tammy and Anthony.

  “You can fly?” He sounded so shocked that several of the other people in the room looked up at us and stared.

  “Hey, pipe down, cowboy,” I said in low voice, “or you’ll get me into trouble. Remember, I told you I could last three or four days? Well, it’s been three—which means it could be another three before we get back. I don’t wa
nt to be tempted by hunger into doing something dumb and bloody before we get there. Anyway, there’s something else I need to talk to you about. Not here. Let’s go for a walk over to Washington Square.”

  I don’t know if St. Louis really was bigger than New Orleans, but it sure seemed that way. However, it didn’t have the same busy nightlife.

  Once out on the sidewalk, I said, “Look, I know it’s not my business to tell you this, but you’re Lalie’s doctor, so you’re going to find out sooner or later. Lalie believes she’s pregnant.”

  “But, it’s only been—”

  “I know. That’s what I said.” I explained everything to him and reminded him that the kid would be a bastard, something they made a huge deal of back then. Lalie would probably have to go somewhere else to have it and live down the shame, maybe even to Paris. Most likely, the colonel would resign his job and take her there.

  “So you see, if you don’t want to lose her, you’re going to have step up and marry her yourself, and claim the baby as yours, Dr. James. The sooner, the better. I know you love her.”

  He blanched pale as a sheet in the gaslight, his whole body rigid and clenched. For the first time, I feared he might run off and throw himself in the river.

  “Yes, by God, I did love her, but she has shamed and humiliated me—has fallen, soiled herself with another man.”

  “You still love her. She’s still the same Lalie.”

  He clenched his fist and punched it into the palm of his other hand. “But to rear another man’s child as my own, to lend him my name… you don’t know what you ask of me, Mrs. Moon. It’s more than any man should have to bear!”

  “It’s that or lose her forever. Look.” I stopped and put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ve never had to do what I’m asking you to do, but I do know how it feels to forgive the man you love for cheating on you.”

  “Cheating on you?”

  “Betraying you with another woman.” Jeez, what was wrong with these people? You had to spell everything out to them. “And that was really hard for me to get over. You know, to forgive when I couldn’t forget. Sure, it got in the way of things for a long time, but right now, separated the way I am from him maybe forever, it seems like the dumbest thing in the world to get upset about. You know? In a month, you could be separated from Lalie and the colonel by the whole Atlantic Ocean—and that’s almost as big a gulf. You should know, since you sailed it. Believe me, you’ll kick yourself then for being such a dumb-aah—uh, dummy.”

  He stopped and leaned on a fence railing, and for a moment, I thought he would break down. Instead, he straightened up and tipped his top hat to me. “You’re quite right, dear lady. Ever the voice of good sense—thank you. I’ll propose to her first thing tomorrow. I’m sure her head’s still full of this false theater popinjay, but perhaps in time, she’ll grow to reciprocate my feelings.”

  I stood up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. He was still such a boy, but a really good-hearted and good-looking one.

  ***

  The events of the past few days had me thinking of Kingsley that night in bed, but not in a good way. No, I couldn’t have been less turned on or excited.

  No, I lay there thinking of my big, hulking man, not even born yet, although he would be early next century. Kingsley was, after all, an older man. Much older. I often forgot about that. It helped that he didn’t look a day over forty.

  Back in my time, he’s eighty-two years old.

  Eighty-freakin-two.

  Of course, I neared the far end of my thirties, but people keep mistaking me for like twenty-five. The last time I saw myself in the mirror, I thought I passed for like twenty-eight or so, but even my sister says I’m looking even younger these days.

  I sighed and rested, until I remembered all over again that, unless the sun was coming up, I didn’t need to rest. Ever. Damn sunrise still knocked me out for a few hours. Some things, even alchemy couldn’t overpower.

  Besides, I had work to do.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Late that night, I packed up all my clothes and toilet articles in my carpetbag and crept upstairs onto the roof of the hotel, a much bigger and taller building than anything in New Orleans, at least twenty stories.

  Next, I stripped to my birthday suit and packed everything away, too. For a moment, I stood naked and shivering on the edge of the rooftop. It had turned steadily cooler as we traveled north, and a freezing blast from the direction of the Great Plains blew over me. It might make my night flight a cold business. I’d never flown much of anywhere but southern California before, unless you counted that time I’d gone halfway to Hawaii after capturing that vampire-hunter.

  Or to the Moon. Long story. Hey, I had to visit. The place has my name on it.

  I closed my eyes, beckoned into the darkness, and transformed. Upon leaping into the air, I took a single, exploratory circular swoop around the rooftop, then scooped up my carpetbag in one of my clawed feet and flew south.

  My route could not have been easier to follow: the long glittering ribbon of the Mississippi River. Far below me, the dark shapes of ships, their bobbing lanterns pinpricks of light, crawled along the water. Behind me, the gaslight glow of St. Louis shimmered; on either side of the riverbank, towns winked and blinked like yellow fireflies.

  It struck me that I was queen of all I saw—no being existed in the world as powerful as me—except for Vlad Dracula, wherever he was. I could have anything I wanted here; a new life as a multi-millionairess, with lovers, servants, vessels; the best of everything. I had only to take it.

  Far, far away to the east, the dawn would soon be rising over Newfoundland, then Nova Scotia and New England. Today was Election Day, and when the day was over, I knew the country would have elected Abraham Lincoln as president. I really should have placed a few bets with bookies.

  A few months after this election, the southern Confederate states would secede and the war would start. It would be an amazing time to be a vampire, I realized; New Orleans would probably empty of the Têtes de Morts as they followed both armies, gorging on the fresh blood of battles. Or posing as doctors and nurses…

  Blood, rivers and rivers of blood, Elizabeth whispered inside my mind. Imagine it… smell it… taste it… you could be queen of it all…

  I thought of Dominique the Frenchman, who Eulalie said was the king of the crew. What would happen if I stayed here and we had it out, finally? A duel between us wouldn’t have a happy ending. Not for me, anyway. I knew for a fact that Dominique survived until that night in 2013 when Kingsley killed him—what I didn’t know was whether or not I could survive a duel with him in this time period. I could die in 1860 without making any ripples in the fabric of time. If I did, for all anyone in my real life would probably ever know, I’d be just one more of New Orleans’ many missing persons.

  Or was that true? If I bumped off Dominique, would it really matter to history? How did that work, anyway? Was I altering the ‘space-time continuum’ or whatever they called it in time travel movies, just by existing right now? Perhaps I’d accidentally kill a mosquito that might have given some famous person a disease that killed them? Maybe I should just tough it out for one hundred fifty-five years—I mean, think of all the good I could do with my powers—I could try to stop the Civil War, for one thing. Or smother Adolf Hitler in his crib when he was born in another thirty years or so. If only I actually knew more history, my bucket list could probably go on and on.

  I hadn’t paid much attention in class. I’d forgotten the names of all those Civil War battles, for instance, and who’d won them. If I tried to change history, I’d be like a bull in a china shop…

  Suppose I altered some genealogy thread that wiped out my own birth, or Danny’s? Then not only would we have never existed, but neither would our kids!

  Day finally broke: first violet, then pink, then a pale canary yellow over the mighty Mississippi. It was a sight I knew I’d never forget. With the dawn came a whole new set of questions and problems.
I’d never been in this form during broad daylight before—could I even bear it? Or would my wings catch fire and burn up, even with the ring protecting me? What if I someone spotted me from the ground? I didn’t want to start some kind of mass panic over six states.

  I thought I was probably still over Missouri now or maybe close to Arkansas—I hadn’t yet recognized the gaslights and street grid of Cairo. From high above, I could see almost nothing but deep green to my right; low pine woodland mixed with rocky bluffs. A few wagon trails cut through the denser forests to the west, and I turned in that direction, looking for some place dark to hide.

  Finally, I found a shadowed, tree-lined gorge off an old Indian trail that led to caves higher up, and a deeper, larger cavern extending into the rocks. When I flew in, I disturbed a nest of bats, and they swarmed out in a skittering panic. I guess to them I was like King Kong would be to a chimp; they were probably terrified by my smell. Guano paved the floor, so I put the carpetbag on a ledge, and then, hanging upside down by my razor-clawed feet, slept until sunset. A first for me, and actually quite comfortable.

  Lord help me.

  Approaching New Orleans late that next night, I realized that I shouldn’t show up in the town too soon. Dr. James had been sending telegrams to the colonel’s office at every stop, and I knew he had wired from the hotel the night we found Lalie in St. Louis. So I couldn’t exactly appear the next day, or it would freak everybody out. I needed a place to land. Somewhere I could hide out for another day.

  Like Eulalie Mandeville Macarty’s house.

  “Surprise!” I said to myself, after I landed on the moonlit back lawn of her house, transformed, then put on my clothes and walked around to the first-floor drawing room windows. However, the surprise wound up being on me.

  Through the chintz curtains, the light of the flickering candles illuminated a group of people seated inside. All but two were white; a brown, middle-aged woman in a rose silk robe stood, along with a very black, very big, but wizened old man with a long, white beard and tribal scars on his cheeks, dressed like some kind of tramp or hobo. Not until I stepped into the room through the French window did I recognized the middle-aged woman as Eulalie.