Jenna Ryan's Blog

Seasick. The Creole riverboat captain called it mal de mer and laughed his way to the bridge.

Ignoring him, Mitchell worked on surviving the nightmarish journey. The boat, a ferry that could, if squeezed, hold twenty vehicles, probably ran slow and easy most days. Unfortunately, there was a summer storm raging in the bayou. Everything on the water pitched and rolled, including Mitchell's stomach. He might not eat, drink or even stand up ever again.

"Y'all are gonna need to be extra careful on the drive to town." The captain paused during one of his rounds to lean in the window of Mitchell's Jeep Wrangler. He gave the well a pat. "This be one fine set of wheels you got here. Wouldn't want 'em to wind up in a bog."

He had a gap between his front teeth, a bowed body and blotchy, careworn features that, if nothing else, gave Mitchell something to fixate on besides his raw stomach.

The man shook his head. "You won't be finding no place for sleeping as fancy as this piece of machinery on Bokur Island. No, sir, you surely won't."

"Any flat surface'll do," Mitchell told him. "How long 'til we dock?"

The captain screwed up his face. "Wind's blowing against us. Maybe fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes, Mitchell thought. He'd spent five nights in a New Orleans Dumpster back when he'd been a rookie. He could survive another fifteen minutes on choppy water.

"Engine's making a funny noise." Turning an ear downward, the captain attempted to listen. "Possible the spirits are taking exception to more snoopy strangers arriving on Bokur."

Mitchell raised a brow. "Snoopy or snotty?"

"Some of both, I guess. For people needing money, tourist dollars are always welcome. But no spirit ever needed money, now did it?"

"You haven't met my grandfather." Mitchell regarded him, frowning. "Are you telling me you believe the island's haunted?"

"Well, of course it's haunted. Mind that don't mean you'll be tripping over spooks and bogeys. It ain't that kind of haunting. Here's mostly a laissez-faire existence. Unless you rile or cross paths with the wrong specter." He scratched his neck. "Ain't you ever beheld a ghost before?"

Mitchell thought of his newly acquired blues club and all the smashed glass on the storeroom floor. "I might have. Once or twice."

"Well, there you are then. If a fella knows what's what going in, he's got nothing to worry about."

Nothing except keeping down the gumbo he'd foolishly eaten for dinner.

Sitting back for the remainder of the trip, Mitchell watched misshapen trees on both shores grow dark and menacing. Giant roots humped out of the water, mere inches below the delicate tips of Spanish moss that waved like shredded curtains from every limb and branch in sight.

Phoebe had pumped a whack of information into his brain three days ago, including the name of a man he'd previously only heard in whispers, Crucible.

It was all about territory and hierarchies in the world of law and order. City cops and government agents didn't tend to mix well. Label the agent in question a phantom, tack on a small group of shadowy superiors -- directors, Phoebe had called them -- and the animosity level would surely reach unparalleled heights.

Crucible had apparently been dogging Leshad for the past eighteen months, ever since Phoebe's mother, Madeleine Lessard, had been brutally murdered. The woman had already been blind when Leshad had stabbed her, but that hadn't stopped him from digging her eyeballs from their sockets. He'd left behind a rudimentary voodoo doll fashioned in the likeness of his victim and a calling card bearing the eerie silhouette of a man. Then he'd moved on.

Madeleine Lessard's death had been the first in what would ultimately become a long string of murders. Phoebe claimed it was the psychic connection that kept Leshad going, kept him killing. Thanks to her guilt trip, a similar connection now had Mitchell surviving a storm-tossed trip on a rocking bayou boat. His mother and her Catholic conscience had a great deal to answer for.

The docking on Bokur was no less brutal than the final leg of the trip. Mitchell's stomach continued to churn long after he made his way down the gangplank and onto a mud and gravel road that had no direction signs and wound back on itself as often as it ran straight. It broadened eventually into a strip of asphalt almost wide enough for two vehicles to pass. There were still no signs to be had, but he suspected it was all about increments on this island.

Gusting wind blew rain and sharp pebbles at his windshield. Ahead of him, wicked slashes of lightning speared from roiling sky to heaving water. Hard on its heels, thunder rattled the ground and his Jeep. The force of the storm made the riverboat ride seem tame by comparison.

Another spectacular bolt of lightning shot from the clouds. Angry bursts of wind grabbed his vehicle like claws and tossed him across the road. He avoided sideswiping a sycamore tree, narrowed his eyes at the challenge and upped the speed of his wipers. He was considering getting into the spirit and adding some Deep Purple to the mix when he saw it. Or thought he did. Just for a moment. A face in the teeming blackness directly ahead.

Mitchell hit the brakes, hard. Controlling the resulting spin that sent him into a patch of mud, he blew out a breath, leaned forward and squinted at...nothing. Not a damn thing. Only interminable darkness and more pitchfork lightning than he'd ever seen in his life.

"Okay, that was weird." He scanned and rescanned what was visible in the Jeep's headlight -- not much -- before easing back onto the road.

His grandfather would say this was what he got for abandoning his family obligations and becoming a cop. Favors begged that sent him to Voodoo Island where ugly faces popped up out of --

"Shit!"

The face appeared again in the next lightning strike. It had a body attached to it this time. But the real shock came when he realized both things were suspended three feet above the pavement.

Mitchell jerked the steering wheel to the right. Lightning shot through the sky, momentarily blinding him. He glimpsed another shape coming toward him on the passenger side. Glimpsed it, but couldn't do a damn thing to avoid it as the driver's side of his vehicle rammed into the trunk of an enormous live oak.

It took him several moments to rejig his brain. Black moss covered half the windshield. As Deep Purple kicked in, he told himself no way had what he thought he'd seen been out there. No fucking way.

He had himself mostly convinced when lightning illuminated the swamp again. And there it was. A wooden doll with a painted face. And wild, gleaming eyes that bored straight into his.

Black Rose Blood Orchid Scarlet Bells Dark Lily

If anything, the fog thickened in the time it took Rosemary Sayer to get from her home in Cambridge across the Charles River to Bethany Mews.

Keeping her hand, and the pistol she'd brought along as a precaution, in her jacket pocket, she looked up at the mostly deserted building. She let five relatively silent seconds pass before raising her phone and making the call.

"You took you damn time," her stepbrother said, panting. "Is anything suspicious happening down there?"

She swept her gaze across the blurred outline of the roof. "There's only the fog, Ben, and whatever's wandering around inside it. You said number thirteen, right?"

"Right, but wrong. I'll come to you. I'm hearing noises downstairs that I don't like."

The skin on her neck prickled and got her moving across the street. "I can tell you've been shot. Where?"

"Leg and shoulder." His breath labored in and out, noisily enough to scare her. "Ro, do rats have yellow eyes?"

"I'm not -- " She tugged on the warped outer door. "Some do. I think." Planting a foot on the frame, she gave a hard yank. "Are you anywhere near downstairs yet?"

The door flew open while she was pulling, and it threw her backward. Before she could catch her balance, 160 pounds of long-haired, tattooed, leather-and-denim-clad stepbrother tumbled across the threshold and sent her crashing to the ground. Alarmed, and with her head reeling from the unexpected impact, Rosemary pushed him far enough away to see his shadowed face.

By filthy streetlamp light, she spied the leading edge of gray stealing across his striking features. And, oh God, his eyes were beginning to glaze.

"You need a hospital." She got them both to their knees, then stopped and snapped her head around. Were those real voices murmuring in the fog, or was she only hearing them in her mind?

Fiery daggers of pain shattered the thought. She drew a short, sharp breath, and for a moment -- less than a heartbeat of time -- felt the icy blackness of death glide in and out.

"Jesus, Ben." Clutching his shoulders, she dragged him up higher. "How much blood have you lost?"

"A lot." He slurred the words and climbed to his feet as a drunk might after a bar brawl. "Alley's right there. I lowered the fire escape." He sent her a meaningful look. "Just in case."

Because it was what he needed, Rosemary nodded and took his weight. "You always wind up in so much trouble," she whispered without rancor. "Talk to me, Ben. Who did this to you?"

"Reaper." His bitter laugh ended on a cough. "It's what he is and what he's called. A real green-blooded bastard."

He stumbled. She caught him. "Hospital," she repeated through teeth she didn't dare let chatter.

He gave another feeble laugh. "Come on, Ro, feel me all the way through. No way am I checking in just so I can check out."

Brilliant red arrows streaked through her head. As they did, Ben staggered and almost took her down again.

They reached the alley, barely. She felt him fighting the pain as he wrenched himself away from her and grabbed the front of her jacket.

"You need to find Tanner, Ro. Do you hear me? Find Sean Tanner. I'm thinking the name of the town where you can do that. Open your mind and take it from me. Read me, goddammit. You're as good as Great-Grandmother ever was when you want to be."

I never wanted to be, Rosemary thought, but now wasn't the time to argue. She allowed the swamp he was visualizing in his mind to take shape in hers. Thick, green, lush. Teeming with insect life. Crawling with reptiles.

"Can you see it?" Ben demanded. "See him?"

A man's face swam into view. She closed her eyes briefly and the muddy features cleared. "He looks like you."

"Yeah -- no. Smoke and mirrors, Glinda. Same hair and earring, less tattoos, more pissed off. You'll have a time with him."

"I'll have a time with him, why?" Desperate now, she shook him. "Stay with me, Ben." She glanced into the fog. Definitely bodies in there. "You need to sit. Maybe I can do something to slow the blood loss."

He started to shake his head but stiffened and squeezed her upper arms instead. "Someone's coming. Can you hear the footsteps? They're quiet and purposeful." He regarded her a moment longer, stared right into her eyes. "You have to go. Go!" he rasped when she hesitated. "For God's sake, Ro, we're talking pure evil here. Use the fire escape. Leshad. Remember the name."

"You've told me the name, Ben."

"Remember Great-Grandmother too. And whatever you do, don't forget about the Reaper. He's a big man on the inside. Sorry, I can't give you a face, but it's all about secrets in Leshad's world. He'll send the Reaper after you. The second I'm dead, Ro, Leshad'll turn his sights on you. Get to Tanner."

He shoved her away before she could respond. Stumbling into the fog, he flung his arms out to the sides and let his head fall back. "Man, I can smell that fire and brimstone from here."

A gun appeared in his hand. Rosemary glimpsed the cocky half-smile she'd seen so often on his lips. And then -- nothing. He was gone, firing bullets of pain at her and bullets of lead into the darkness.

Two very real yellow lights appeared. They flickered for a moment before blinking out in tandem.

"It's you he wants, Ro." Bens voice came directly into her brain. "Run, now, before Leshad gets hold of you."

Pain bombarded her, wave after searing wave of blood-soaked red. She backed away, heard more shots and finally, a long, rattling breath.

"No," she whispered, but it was a hollow denial, an empty, echoing sound, swiftly absorbed by the fog.

She closed her eyes, had to so she could jump-start her mind. She only opened them when her shoulder bumped the bottom rung of the fire escape.

A garish face, wooden and painted, hovered in the fog not two feet in front of her. A scream leaped straight into her throat, but she didn't let it out, and the face didn't linger. After taking one more backward step, neither did she. Grimly resolved, she grabbed the metal rails and swung herself onto the rusty ladder.

Ben had given his life to save hers. No way would she allow something so costly to be taken away by a mad serial killer or his bloodsucking Reaper.

Black Rose Blood Orchid Scarlet Bells

Ten o'clock had come and gone by the time Kate Marshall exchanged her hospital scrubs for a pair of faded jeans, a billed cap, and a rapidly growing anger that demanded an outlet. Calling him every unflattering name she could think of, she went in search of Jason Nolan.

It didn't require much brainpower to figure out where he'd be. When someone from St. Mark's wanted to get drunk and wallow, that person headed straight for the last remaining stretch of derelict waterfront in the city and did the Barbary Coast thing until he or she passed out or wound up in jail.

Either scenario worked for Kate, but only after she'd slashed Nolan into a thousand bloody pieces.

She started with Shanghai Lily's for the simple reason that it was the most disreputable of the three bars in the area. The low, ugly building squatted under a pier that was as badly in need of demolition as the business it sheltered.

Thick fog shrouded the walls and blacked-out windows as Kate pushed her way inside. Her grandfather claimed Lily's was the final resting place for every opium addict who'd ever passed through its nineteenth-century doors. Good old Grandpa. At ninety-three, what did he care if believing in ghosts wasn't tolerated in the Marshall family? Intolerance didn't make a thing impossible.

Kate pictured her grandfather's face and grinned. Then her eyes adjusted to the weird bluish haze, and she zeroed in on the only back booth with a single occupant.

It was Nolan, all right. Long, dark hair, dark shirt and jacket. Even if she hadn't recognized his outline, she could have identified him by the pair of slinky women in tight silk dresses who were eyeing his booth like felines in heat. So typical.

Avoiding the flaccid hand that drifted toward her from a low sofa, she strode across the floor, halted and planted her palms on the pitted wood table.

"You, Jason Nolan, are an A-number-one, head-of-the-list, top-of-the-heap bastard. You need to know that, and I need to tell you since we're apparently both slated to wind up on slabs in the morgue next to Frankie Perradine. I'm sure you recognize the name, but on the off chance you don't, Frankie is - or was - the eldest nephew of Alistair Perradine, a man who, unless you've been living on Mars, needs no introduction to anyone in the Bay Area."

Raising his head, Nolan shot her a bleary-eyed warning. "Go away, Kate."

"That's it?" Shoving back, she frowned briefly at her sticky palms. "That's all you have to say? Are you so drunk you missed the part of my tirade that put Frankie Perradine in our creepy basement morgue? Because that's where he is and where he'll stay until the autopsy's complete."

"I don't care about Frankie Perradine."

She blinked. "What?"

"You heard me. Now take off."

"I'm not... Nolan, you're a surgeon. You're supposed to care about all people."

The warning light in Nolan's eyes took on a dangerous edge. "I've never made that claim. Piss off and leave me alone."

"Fine." She waved at a wisp of illegal smoke. "If that's your attitude, I'll stop at telling you off. You don't deserve anything more."

"Glad we agree. Go."

She could punch him, she supposed, and make him listen. Or she could turn, walk and let the chips fall. But Anna's threats had been very real, and death was too severe a punishment for a man who'd saved so many lives.

A pronounced creak had her casting an uncertain glance into the rafters. The dusty overhead lights popped off and on. They fluttered for a few seconds but thankfully held. Another puff of smoke wafted past as she returned her gaze to Nolan's brooding face.

"I lost him." She tried not to visualize the moment every surgeon dreaded. "I just - I couldn't get him back."

Slightly bloodshot eyes narrowed on hers, but all Nolan did was lift his glass and shrug. "It happens, Marshall. To the best of us."

Heat laced with temper flooded in. "You being the best, I presume."

"Was once." He drank deeply. "Not anymore."

"You're just full of profound statements tonight, aren't you?" She swept an arm around the room. "Nolan, you're sitting in a booth that has red velvet seats, or did until they wore out. The point is, people get spirited away from places like this." She regarded her palms again. "What's on the table?"

"Bars around here have rats. Lily has a rodent swatter."

"That's gross." Kate grabbed a napkin from under an empty beer mug and scrubbed the stickiness from her palms.

"Would be if it were true," he agreed. "Now, take a hint and let me get hammered in peace. I'm sorry you lost your patient. It wasn't your fault. You can't save the world. Pick your cliché, and get one of the waiters to bring me a pitcher of Bud on your way out the door."

Punch him or pour what remained of his beer over his head? Resolved, Kate set her knuckles on the table. "Okay, here it is. I'm only going to say this once, and unless you're the biggest jackass on the planet, you want to pay attention. Medics brought Frankie Perradine in to our Emergency at 7:39 p.m. St. Mark's was his mother's specific request. He had three bullets lodged in his chest. He went into cardiac arrest twice while I was attempting to extract bullet number two. Word is he was shot by an intruder in his girlfriend's apartment. His mother thinks the shooting part's irrelevant. She blames me for the fact that he's dead."

"So crappy night all around."

"She also blames you."

"Making this the perfect end to a total pisser of a day. Why me?"

"Because I was there and you weren't."

"Yeah?" A crooked grin appeared. "Sounds like a half-assed compliment to me."

Grabbing a handful of his hair, Kate yanked his head up. "What it wounds like is a threat. As in death. Or so promises the infamous Anna Perradine."

"Back off," he warned, and with a low growl, she released him.

He sat back in the shadows of the shabby velvet booth to study her. They'd known each other for three years. To this day, it struck Kate as curious that all they'd really ever done, aside from working with each other, was fight.

"Don't let the black-haired bitch scare you," Nolan said at length. "She likes to exercise her temper. Her brother-in-law will rein her in. Now be a good little sawbones and go home. I'll pick the cliché for you. Frankie Perradine's death wasn't your fault, and Anna's big and powerful brother-in-law is savvy enough to realize that. Threat eliminated. Take a hike."

She moved her lips into a smile. "Happy to. I'll order you a triple boilermaker before I go. My treat." She flicked a hand at his glass. "As long as you're drinking, you might as well end the night with a slow slide under Lily's table. Assuming you aren't actually shanghaied, a brilliant trauma surgeon like you should be up and cutting by Monday, no problem. And you can eighty-six the nasty look. I don't wither."

"You don't take a hint worth a damn either. I want to be alone."

Bad idea coming here, Kate realized with a sigh. Hospital buzz suggest that Nolan's father had hanged himself two years ago, six months after his much younger brother Zack had been killed by a roadside bomber on his first tour of duty in the Middle East. Somewhere along the line, this conversation had taken a disastrous turn.

"I'll leave," she told him. "For what it's worth, and by way of an apology, I'll wan you that Shanghai Lily's sex vultures are preparing to close in. They've been hovering just out of range since I got here."

A faint smile grazed his lips. "The Lolas."

"The who?"

"That's their name. Both of them. They're cousins. Their aunt owns the bar."

"Shanghai Lily?"

"She inherited it from her great-great-grandmother, Lily the first. Anna Perradine is famous for issuing hollow threats, Kate. She's heavily addicted and an emotional train wreck. Go home, go to bed, sleep. I guarantee Anna will once the drugs loosen their grip."

Though she wasn't sure she believed that, Kate nonetheless felt the knots in her stomach loosen. "Seeing as you appear to know her, I'll accept that you might be right. In any case, she can hardly - "

The bar went dark, halting her. When it stayed that way, she breathed out. "Yep, really bad idea. I bet there's fifty ready-to-grope man-hands between here and the door."

"Not to mention the Lolas."

Nolan's voice came from directly beside her. She stiffened when he curled his long fingers around her upper arm.

"What are you doing? I can make my way through a roomful of drunks and crackheads. Besides someone's firing up the generator."

"Heard it," Nolan said. "Stand still."

"Why?"

Five small lights flickered on. The result was a roomful of freakish shadows and several slurred demands for more whatever.

Kate pushed on Nolan's restraining hand. "Look, I really am fine on my own. I took kickboxing - "

"Get down!"

She started to follow his gaze but found herself on the floor before she could blink. Mere inches above the table, buckshot blasted apart the red velvet booth.

Black Rose Blood Orchid

Just one glass of wine, Mia thought. Merlot, partly because she was in the mood for plums, but mostly because the undisputed expert at her club, the Rose Noire, had given her a bottle of 1965 from his personal cellar.

She took the carpeted back stairs to the second floor of her sexy French Quarter lounge. Mellow jazz trailed her up the staircase.

She spotted the fog the moment she entered her office. Pleased, she left the overheads off. A mauve bulb burned soft and low on a balcony that invited her to sip her wine in a cocoon of relative silence.

Opening the double French doors, she stood for a moment absorbing the night. It was like stepping into a film noir, a black-and-white world with a punch of red, courtesy of the petunias she'd coaxed from seedlings into a riot of beautiful summer blossoms.

Pleased with a green thumb she hadn't realized she possessed, Mia took a savoring drink. Because the air smelled delicious, she slipped off her stilettos and gave her hair a liberating toss. Then she caught a muffled thud and lowered her gaze to the alley.

Time froze. The scene below condensed. A single black-and-white frame separated itself from the rest of the film. Nothing and no one moved. Until she blinked. Finally, slowly, the clock began to tick once again.

She saw blood, a fountain of it, pouring from an old woman's throat. She spied the terror stamped on the woman's face. She glimpsed a hand, a man's. One of his fingers was missing. Her shocked mind realized so was most of his face.

No, not missing. Covered. Invisible in the darkness of the alley. He had a black cap pulled low over his forehead and a black scarf tied across his nose and mouth.

But his eyes... Now those were clearly visible. Deep gold and exquisitely shaped, they sharpened to a diamond gleam as they followed a line from the old woman's dying gaze straight to hers.

Black Rose Blood Orchid