The House on Prytania (Royal Street #2)(63)
Author: Karen White
“Nola!” she said, herding her small group inside to stand behind one of the pews. “So good to see you again.” She glanced over at Mrs. Wenzel and her smile dimmed. She reached inside her fanny pack and pulled out a business card. “Please call if you need a tour. I’m happy to do private tours of neighborhoods and specific sites. I do cemetery tours, too.”
“Hashtag nope,” Sarah said quietly behind me.
I took the card and put it in my jeans pocket. “Thanks, T’ish. Will do.”
She winked, then began herding her group into the cathedral as I turned back to Mrs. Wenzel. “I hope to see you and your sister at Mrs. Ryan’s party,” she said, her voice warmer than when we’d started, due to our bonding over foundational cracks and re-leading stained glass seams.
I wasn’t sure if either one of us would be on the invite list, so I only smiled and nodded.
In a lowered voice, Mrs. Wenzel added, “I would appreciate an introduction to Mrs. Ryan. I’m sure she knows who I am, but we’ve never actually met. I’ve been trying to speak with her regarding . . . an important topic, and I was hoping that if perhaps we had a more personal connection, she might make time for Honey and me in her busy schedule.”
“Is this about your brother and his family?” At her look of chagrin, I said, “There are a lot of families in your situation who need . . . help from Mrs. Ryan.”
She nodded. “We’ve heard that Mrs. Ryan has a special gift. It’s not something we have ever considered, but we are desperate and willing to try anything.” With a stiff smile, she added, “Saints wouldn’t be saints without miracles, so we know they happen.”
“Of course,” I said. “I hope I have the opportunity to introduce you at the party.”
As we were saying our good-byes, a movement glimpsed from the corner of my eye caught my attention. A bright blue feather drifted in the air above Mrs. Wenzel, its distinct color bringing all three of us to look at it. Sarah reached out and snatched it from the air, then held it out on her open palm to see it better.
She stroked it gently with her finger. “It’s from a bird.”
We all looked up at the ceiling as if expecting to see one flying above us. I thought of Mrs. Wenzel’s caged parrotlet, Zeus, with its azure feathers and its odd fascination with Beau.
With her sensibly short and unpolished nails our guide plucked the feather from Sarah’s hand. “How odd. I do believe that belongs to Zeus. It must have been stuck to my jacket.”
“Must have been,” I agreed, as Sarah and I nodded vigorously.
We said another quick good-bye and exited the church. We didn’t speak until we’d reached the park gates surrounding the statue of Andrew Jackson.
“I don’t think that feather could have come from her coat,” Jolene said.
“I’m pretty sure it didn’t,” I said. Feeling Sarah’s gaze on me, I said, “I’ll explain later.” I looked at my watch. “We should head over to Muriel’s. I don’t want to be late. We can do Café du Monde afterward.”
Jolene was looking with interest at the various vendors set up on the flagstones between the park and the cathedral. The eclectic group included landscape and portrait artists in different mediums, as well as mimes, palm readers, magicians, tarot readers, and everything in between. Somewhere in the back of my closet I had a chalk portrait I’d had done when I’d moved to New Orleans the first time, for my freshman year at Tulane. The artist was actually quite good and had delivered an accurate representation of what I’d looked like at the time—young, hopeful, and incredibly naïve. I no longer recognized that girl—which was why I’d relegated the portrait to the back of my closet—yet I still couldn’t make myself throw it away.
Jolene paused to watch a man with a long purple braid painting a watercolor of the cathedral. I stopped, too, amazed at how a brush dipped into paint could replicate on paper an exact image of a church steeple. My artistic talents extended only to stick figures with hair and eyes.
“We should get our tarot cards read,” Jolene suggested. “I think we have time.”
“No,” Sarah and I said in unison.
“Melanie considers tarot cards to be in the same category as a Ouija board,” I explained. “Meaning they could invite unwelcome visitors.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” Jolene said, drawing out her lipstick and mirror from her purse. “I guess I can come back another time.”
“Because you want to know if Jaxson is going to propose to Carly or not?”
“How did you guess?”
“Because a person doesn’t have to be psychic to guess the obvious.”
We returned to watching the man painting, until I became aware of someone staring at us. I turned my head and noticed a woman seated in a folding chair near a black iron fence, in front of a small table draped with a black satin cloth. Sparkling glitter had been sprinkled liberally over it and a crystal globe—the same kind every Disney witch used to see the future—that sat in the middle of the table. The woman wore a black cape with a hood almost covering her long black hair streaked with gray. Her craggy face showed years of hard living and bad choices (she was what Jolene labeled a person who obviously didn’t use sunscreen), but her large and almost black deep-set eyes were clear and steady, her penetrating gaze on me like a guided X-ray.
Sarah joined me in watching the psychic, whose attention was now directed past us. I shifted my gaze but saw only the steady stream of tourists walking around on the flagstones in front of the church.
“What about having our palms read?” Jolene suggested, heading toward the woman with the crystal ball.
“No,” I said. Only a strangled sound emerged from Sarah.
“Why . . . ?” Jolene began, then stopped as she and I saw what Sarah was looking at. On the gray flagstones, a single set of wet footprints, perfectly formed and so fresh that droplets from the ends of the toes glinted in the sunlight. I’d seen them before, but always with Beau. And they were always together, as if left by a stationary person who’d been listening so intently that they hadn’t moved. But these were different, each print separated by about two feet, the impressions from the balls of the feet heavier than the heels and facing the opposite direction from where we’d been standing. As if the person were running away.
CHAPTER 23