The Ghosts of Bourbon Street by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-09T15:00:00+00:00

The krewes of New Orleans were a sacred tradition: people who formed loose social clubs—or sometimes tight occult societies—with the sole stated duty of putting together floats for Mardi Gras. Their work wasn’t the candy-ass sort of thing you’d see in a high school Homecoming parade. No, they organized huge, elaborate rolling castles, hiring teams of dancers, drum lines, and everything else it took to transform an ordinary night into an incredible spectacle. They’d always been there, and they always would be, because without them, Mardi Gras might as well have been the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (which had its own power, although that power was more corporate, and less chaos). Bearing all that in mind, why would the people who ran and lived for those krewes want to do anything else after they died?

The ghost krewes, according to Jermaine, were associations of dead men and women who believed that the annual Carnival festivities helped to keep New Orleans standing, redrawing mystical lines across the fabric of the city. “We figure we may even be more use than the living,” he said. “We don’t have budgets to pay or permits to file. We just work all year to make the best float we can and then we roll it through the ghostroads, and the world keeps on turning.”

“Everybody needs a hobby,” said Rose.

Jermaine’s expression soured. “Seems not everybody thinks so. Someone’s been breaking into our places lately, smashing our floats before we can finish them. If this keeps on, we’re not going to make it to Mardi Gras. It would be the first year the ghost krewes had missed since Carnival began. Even when the living can’t roll out, we do, on Mardi Gras day. It’s part of what makes this city what it is. Our wheels wear down the walls between worlds.”

“Isn’t Mardi Gras in like, February?” I asked.

“How can anyone smash a dead man’s float?” asked Dominic. “How does it have substance?”

“We work with the ghosts of things that were loved,” said Jermaine. “Or hated—same difference, and sometimes you need a little hatred to keep things spicy. We gather them from the city, and we take them to the ghostroads where we can do our work. Anything can be broken, if you know what you’re doing, and where to aim your blows.”

“Let’s not get too metaphysical here,” said Rose, with a warning glance at me and Dominic. She had always been like that, trying to keep us from learning too much about the lands of the dead while we were still among the living. My Aunt Mary was even worse. She was a different type of ghost than Rose, and her afterlife seemed to be a lot less sunshine and roses. “So someone’s been messing with the ghost krewes. What are we supposed to do about it? I’m a hitcher, so it’s not like my strengths are geared toward anything beyond getting out of dodge, and my niece and her boyfriend are alive, which makes them useless.”

“Not so useless,” corrected Jermaine.

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