Eli moaned his release, then collapsed on top of Miranda, huffing and puffing like a locomotive. Even before her heartbeat had returned to normal, he was sound asleep.
She rolled him over and slid out from under his weight. Feeling his fluids leak from her body, she crawled out of bed and padded across the B&B’s creaky wooden floor to the bathroom. She peed, pulled a chain to flush the antique toilet’s overhead tank, and swiped a wet washcloth between her legs.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she saw a young woman sitting in the rocking chair. One breast peeked from the torn bodice of a lace nightgown; her auburn hair cascaded down over the other. A dark stain spread between them.
“Oh my God!” Miranda rushed toward the woman, her initial surprise replaced by concern. “What happened to you?”
“He shot me,” the woman answered, her voice barely audible.
“Oh my God!”
When Miranda reached out to her, the wounded woman vanished. Only the rocker’s slight movement attested to her former presence. Miranda backed slowly away from the chair, her eyes wide as she searched the shadowy room. Where’d she go?
Eli’s snores rumbled behind her. Glancing around the room one last time, she made her way back to bed. I couldn’t have imagined that, she thought as her trembling hands pulled the sheet up over her naked body. I may have just seen my first ghost.
Sunlight spilled onto the porch at the rear of the B&B, where white wicker tables and chairs were arranged for breakfast. Only three other guests lingered this late in the morning.
“A ghost?” Eli asked, stirring cream into his chicory-laced coffee.
“What else could it have been? I told you this place was haunted.” Miranda broke off a piece of beignet dusted with confectioner’s sugar and popped it in her mouth.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“It all happened so fast.”
A heavy-set man with a puffy, florid face, seated at the table beside them, leaned toward Miranda. “You saw her too?”
“Who?” Miranda asked.
“The old lady with the big hat.”
“No.”
The man looked perplexed. “Oh, I thought you said you saw a ghost.”
"I did. Well, at least I think I did. But the woman I saw was young, with long red hair and a torn nightgown. She said, ‘He shot me,’ then disappeared into thin air."
“That’s Annalise,” a woman at a nearby table, wearing a New York Yankees T-shirt, interjected.
“Who’s Annalise?” the man asked.
“She turned tricks here, back when this B&B was a bordello,” the Yankees fan said in a nasal Brooklyn accent, omitting all her “r’s.”
Her companion, a horse-faced woman with a blond ponytail, explained, “Even though Annalise worked as a prostitute, she had a lover who was jealous of all her johns.
One night he barged into a room upstairs where she was plying her trade and shot her.”
“It had to be the room we’re in,” Eli said, rolling his eyes.
“She died a few hours later, stretched out on the divan over there,” the woman with the ponytail continued. “But the cops never charged him with the crime.”
“Now Annalise haunts her old digs, spooking visitors,” the New Yorker added.
“Maybe she’s trying to find someone to help her bring her murderer to justice,” Miranda suggested.
“It’s a little late for that,” the horsey woman snorted. “He died more than a century ago.”
“Then who’s the old girl with the fancy hat?” the fat man asked.
“She used to be the madam here,” the New Yorker answered. “They say she feels guilty about what happened.”
“Well, if Annalise shows up again, I’m going to try to get her to talk to me,” Miranda said.
Eli stuck a fork in his eggs Benedict. “Whatever for?”
“I’m curious about what it’s like to be dead. Don’t you want to know what’s on the other side?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not until I have to.”
Before the heat reached its zenith, they visited the Audubon Zoo. After a couple of hours, however, the temperature and humidity sent them scurrying for air-conditioned comfort. Miranda suggested the Museum of Art, a white-pillared building sited amidst huge pines, magnolias, and two-hundred-year-old live oaks hung with Spanish moss.
By the time they’d finished viewing a quarter of the museum’s collection of artwork, Eli was ready for a nap.
“I can’t look at another picture,” he groaned, slumping into a chair near a window that overlooked the beautifully landscaped grounds.
“I just want to take a quick tour of the sculpture garden. It contains fifty-seven works by noted artists, including Henry Moore and Jacques Lipchitz.”
“If you spend a minute looking at each one, we’ll be here another hour.”
“I promise I won’t take that long.”
He yawned and leaned his head against the wall. “Wake me up when you’re done.”
Strolling among the sculptures, Miranda rued the fact that she was still a long way from making her mark in the art world. She’d only had a few shows so far, and group ones at that. Most of her income came from teaching high school art classes, not from sales of her paintings. The great artists’ works live on for centuries after they die, she thought. I want to leave a legacy of my own behind. She ran her hand along the smooth curves of a Moore statue. I don’t have children. None of my work hangs in museums.
Who’ll remember me when I’m gone?
New Orleans comes to life after the sun goes down. Miranda and Eli rode through the Garden District into town on the St. Charles streetcar, past elegant nineteenth-century mansions, Loyola and Tulane Universities, and Audubon Park.
He’d wanted to dine at K-Paul’s or Antoine’s, but didn’t feel like waiting in line for more than an hour for a table. Instead, they found a quiet, unpretentious restaurant tucked away on a side street. The décor featured floor-length red-checkered tablecloths, enough plants to stock a garden center, and an odd assortment of furnishings that appeared to have been gleaned from yard sales. Bessie Smith’s jazz voice wafted through the room.
A corpulent woman with skin the color of India inkberries brought them menus and glasses of ice water with lemon slices. “Catfish good t’night,” she said. “Crawfish ettoufée’s always good.”
Eli studied the menu. “A dozen clams on the half-shell to start. And a bottle of Ménage a Trois White.”
“That’s the name of a wine?” Miranda asked.
“It is. Although it sounds French, it’s from Napa Valley.” He winked at her. “I’m still thinking about a three-way with Annalise.”
She rolled her eyes, closed her menu, and stood up. “I’m going to the ladies’
room.”
He caught her wrist and pulled her toward him. “While you’re in there,” he said in a low voice, “take off your panties.”
“Oh my. What’ve you got in mind?”
He gave her a look that could’ve scalded crème brulée. “I have a fantasy I’d like to fulfill.”
When she returned, naked beneath her pink sundress, her underwear shoved into her enormous boho purse, the raw cherrystones and wine sat on the table waiting for her.
Eli scooped a clam from its shell and fed it to her. Then he forked one into his own mouth and chewed it with obvious relish.
“I want you to eat these clams while I eat your pussy,” he said.
“You mean now? Here? ”
He speared another clam and held it up for her to examine. “Look at this little beauty. Surely you see the resemblance?”
He ran the tip of his finger along the crustacean’s ridged mouth. Miranda’s pussy tingled in response, as if he were caressing her. Lewdly, he licked the clam, then slipped it in her mouth.
“Mmm,” she sighed, swallowing the shellfish.
“When our waitress returns, order blackened redfish for me,” he said, and ducked beneath the table.
She felt his hands push up her dress and gently spread her legs. When his tongue found her seam, Miranda gasped. Self-consciously, she glanced around at the other patrons. Do they have a clue what’s going on? But they all seemed immersed in their own conversations, oblivious to Eli’s seduction beneath the checkered tablecloth.
Miranda popped a clam into her mouth as Eli’s tongue flicked her slit. She sucked another juicy morsel while he sucked her clit. As her fingers slid yet another clam into her mouth, his fingers slid into her opening and stroked her g-spot.
When the rotund black woman returned to take their order, Miranda simply stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. It took a moment to wrest her thoughts away from her cunt.
“I’ll have… crawfish etouffeé,” she said finally, struggling to keep her voice steady. “My companion…wants…oh!” Eli’s finger eased into her asshole.
The waitress frowned at her. “You okay, girl?”
“Uh, yeah, um.” Miranda ran a hand through her purple-streaked hair and squeezed Eli’s head between her thighs. His hot breath was like a bellows, fanning her flames. She clutched the edge of the table. “He’d like the… blackened redfish.”
“Y’all want gumbo wid that?”
Eli‘s lips closed over her clit. Her orgasm banged at the door. “Yes! Oh yes!”
The waitress raised one eyebrow, then shrugged and turned away as Eli brought Miranda to climax. He pumped two fingers into her, hard and fast. Stifling her cries with her napkin, she ground her pussy against his hand. She was still trembling when he emerged from under the table, his mouth glistening with her juice.
“Oh. My. God.”
Eli grinned and slurped a clam from its shell. Then he slid one into her gasping mouth.
“This is what you taste like,” he said. “Sweet, succulent, sublime, with just a hint of the sea. I’ll never again eat clams without thinking of you.”
After dinner, Miranda talked Eli into taking a ride through the French Quarter in a horse-drawn carriage. As they rolled along the streets of the Vieux Carre, music spilled from restaurants and bars.
“This is even hokier than the River Walk boats in San Antonio,” he complained.
She snuggled against him. “I think it’s romantic.”
“Fortunately, we’re not likely to run into anybody we know here.”
“We’re tourists, doing things tourists do.”
He slid his hand under her skirt and caressed her bare thigh. “I’d rather be doing things lovers do.”
“All in good time.”
He gazed at her breasts, her nipples evident through the thin fabric of her pink sundress. “This heat has one advantage—I get to look at you in skimpy clothing.”
She giggled, mentally replaying their scene in the restaurant. I can’t believe we did that!
When the half-hour ride ended, their driver stopped at Jackson Square. Another carriage pulled up behind them. As Miranda started to climb down, she noticed the statue of Andrew Jackson in the center of the park. The dark man on a rearing horse. A sudden spike of fear pierced her heart. She glanced at the carriage behind them. Two men wearing sunglasses and baseball caps had disembarked and were walking quickly toward them. The scene in the crystal!
“Eli, watch out,” she warned. “Those men coming toward us—”
One of the men reached for Miranda, but Eli hit him hard in the jaw and sent him reeling. He elbowed the second man in the stomach.
“Run, Miranda!”
With his youth and physical strength, Eli could probably outdistance the assailants. But in her strappy sandals, Miranda knew she hadn’t a chance of getting away.
She stood frozen in place, desperately trying to see a way out of her predicament.
Suddenly she remembered the golden cord she and Lancelot Lucas had knotted in the magicians’ secret pyramid. Lancelot’s words echoed in her mind. “If ever you need extra strength, all you have to do is untie a knot.” She’d stashed the cord in the bottom of her purse more than a month ago, then forgotten about it. She dragged it out and struggled with a knot, as the man Eli had elbowed lurched toward her.
Eli grabbed her arm and pulled her after him, shouting, “Run!”
The knot opened. Energy surged into her feet and legs, the force propelling her forward like a rocket’s thrust. She raced ahead of Eli across Jackson Square, around Saint Louis Cathedral, and down Rue de Royale.
After several blocks, Miranda spotted a tall, wrought-iron gate standing ajar; it led into a walled courtyard. They ducked inside and slammed the gate behind them. A latch clanked into place. Huddling in the shadows, they gasped for breath, inhaling the heady scent of jasmine that perfumed the air. Slowly her panic subsided.
When he could talk again, Eli asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes, are you?”
“My hand hurts some, but otherwise I’m fine.” He rubbed the knuckles he’d used to punch their attacker. “Were you the star sprinter on your college track team? I’ve never seen a girl run like that.”
“Well, not exactly.” Miranda realized she was still clutching the gold cord. It really worked, she thought gratefully as she shoved it back into her purse. “Were those the French guys who are after you?”
“I think so. With those sunglasses and hats, though, I can’t be certain.”
“How’d they know where we were?”
“I guess they must have followed us.” Eli shook his head. “I thought I’d been careful about covering my tracks.”
“What should we do?”
“Go to the police.”
“Do you think they’ll believe us?”
“I’m sure they’ll believe us. New Orleans has the highest crime rate in the country,” he said. “Catching those assholes is another matter entirely.”
Miranda dug out her cell phone and dialed 911. “Two men just assaulted me and my friend in Jackson Square…No, we aren’t hurt…We’re on Rue de Royale…” She looked around for a street number or some other identification. An old-fashioned coach lamp burned above a sign on a brick building at one end of the courtyard. “I think we’re in the Garden of Eden.”
She hung up and took Eli’s hand. “They’re sending a patrol car to take us to the station so we can make a statement. It might be a while, though. The dispatcher said they’re pretty busy tonight.”
“The Garden of Eden?”
“That’s what the sign says.” She pointed at the brick building.
“I wonder if this is the Tree of Knowledge?” He indicated a nearby tree replete with fragrant white flowers. In the light from the coach lamp, they could make out a number of other trees like it growing in the courtyard.
Miranda sniffed a blossom. “They smell divine.”
A door opened in the brick building and a woman wearing a bibbed apron over a long blue dress stepped out. At her side, she cradled a shotgun.
“Who’s there?” she called.