Yellow Moon by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Author:Jewell Parker Rhodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

It had been human. Once.

He’d been?

He couldn’t remember his name before or after enslavement. He just remembered promises of freedom. But freedom never came. So he killed for it.

Afterward, a woman had helped him.

A woman had betrayed him.

He’d once been a man. Standing, walking, on two legs.

She’d spoken his name. Lovingly. Hatefully.

ELEVEN

BOURBON STREET

FRIDAY EVENING

The French Quarter was jumping. The sky was layered, orange, gray, and black. Neon lights of blue, red, and pink reflected off the pavement, the windows. Some tourists waved carnival glow sticks—green, yellow, blue.

Parks and Marie strolled Bourbon Street. Alert, on edge, both of them searching for ghosts.

Music floated out of bars, restaurants, hotel lounges. Zydeco. The Neville Brothers. Rock. Basin Street Blues. Cajun folk. Washbucket shuffle. Tourists in House of Blues T-shirts or tropical-patterned shirts crowded the streets, some their arms slung around each other; others, their hands twisted around drinks; still others, open palmed, touching, stroking the ancient buildings as if they were make-believe, the Disneyland version of the French Quarter. But everything was real—cobblestones placed by slaves; wrought-iron balconies crafted by free coloreds; and cafés constructed in the 1700s to capture the coins of Spanish seamen, American soldiers, and French noblemen.

“What am I looking for?” asked Parks. “Can’t see ghosts. Waijimojos?”

“Wazimamotos, Parks. You can see victims. And potentially save them. If we can get to victims sooner, they might survive.” Marie poked her head inside Lafite’s Bar.

“Who’s Lafite?” asked Parks, his finger tapping on the brass plaque.

“Jean Lafite. The gentleman pirate. Brutal, yet known for his chivalry. Loved women. Especially quadroons.” Marie scanned the bar. Middle Americans drank beer and hurricanes; no locals here. Just clean-cut patrons indulging in revelry. Pretending they were pirates or privateers.

It was easy to romanticize the past, but life had been brutal, short. Scurvy. Poor dental care. Inadequate public health. She wondered how many murders, slave trips, pirate rampages had been planned at Lafite’s. How many more died of bacteria, fever, syphilis?

“You see something?”

“No. Just thinking about the past. How all of us will become ghosts.”

“You’ve always been this spooky?”

“Let’s keep walking,” Marie said, shaking her head, focusing on the present.

She and Parks were unlikely beat cops. She walked, senses heightened, looking for signs, disturbances in air, light, smell, or sound—anything that would suggest an aberration. Wazimamoto—not a typical ghost, not a spirit loa. Something other. And it wanted to hurt her.

A lost soul. New Orleans was filled with them.

Marie peered high, searching, scanning the balconies, shadows.

Parks strode confidently, cocky. His policeman’s clarity—direct, forthright manner—was intimidating. Maybe it was just the power of carrying a gun? The bouncers eyed him. Even drunks avoided him. A barker for a peep show stopped hailing, “Nude everywhere,” until Parks had passed the marquee with a poster of a blonde, her breasts and crotch decorated with purple feathers.

Parks grimaced. “After this case I’m quitting. Moving to the Jersey shore.”

“Lovely?”

“You bet. Should’ve been a surfer.”

Marie laughed.

“I was good.”

“Do they even have waves in Jersey?”

“More than here.”

“JT’s waving.”

“Where?” Parks spun, his hand on his jacket, covering his gun.

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