new-orleans

Suspicion infused Alex's voice. "Okay? That's it?"I looked back at him and smiled. "That's it. We disagree. It's done. We'll deal with whatever comes next."He stood up, brows lowered over squinty eyes. "Did Lafitte ply you with brandy, or have the body snatchers been here?

I should like to understand more about the signs on the shirt you wore earlier. What was it: Eat the tail and suck the head?

I believe he's been asked to testify today," I told Lennox, who'd continued to track Truman's progress through the room. "He's a member of the historical undead, Truman Capote, the author. He wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood."..."Hi, Truman, you're sitting next to me," I said, pulling out his chair. I figured after he'd asked me to suck on his cherry, we should be on a first-name basis.

I would say Randolph's a horse's ass, but that would be unfair to the horse.

I narrowed my eyes. Jean stayed awfully well informed about prete politics, and often told me things the Elders hadn't yet learned. I suspected this might be one of those things. "How do you know all this?"He shrugged. "A wise man watches as if her were un aigle and listens as if here were un faucon."Eagles and falcons. Both predators. Appropriate.

I guess us folks in California are kind of straitlaced and old-fashioned."Hahaha, I thought on the way downstairs. I never thought I'd say those words with a straight face...

You'll be in good hands with the colonel, you'll see."The colonel? Okay, I was obviously stuck in a Gone With the Wind theme park. Or maybe a Kentucky Fried Chicken farm.Or I was simply hallucinating...

Was I altering the 'space-time continuum' or whatever they called it in time travel movies, just by existing right now? Perhaps I'd accidentally kill a mosquito that might have given some famous person a disease that killed them?

You don't control their minds, ma fifille, you control their hearts" - Cosette

In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home. It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard. I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume.

Every town has __HAT house_: the one that once held dark secrets. You know the house_ the one no one will purchase? The one whose walls have seen blood? The one that even birds avoid, and the darkened windows resemble empty eye sockets? There are furtive, yet insistent, whispers about __hat_ house, murmurs that perhaps the house is best left alone, lest the dark stain left upon that abode__ history seep into our own present-day.

There is a unique bond between the land and the people in the Crescent City. Everyone here came from somewhere else, the muddy brown current of life prying them loose from their homeland and sweeping them downstream, bumping and scraping, until they got caught by the horseshoe bend that is New Orleans. Not so much as a single pebble __ame_ from New Orleans, any more than any of the people did. Every grain of sand, every rock, every drip of brown mud, and every single person walking, living and loving in the city is a refugee from somewhere else. But they made something unique, the people and the land, when they came together in that cohesive, magnetic, magical spot; this sediment of society made something that is not French, not Spanish, and incontrovertibly not American.

Tell me, Mrs. Moon, will your need for sustenance trouble you on this excursion? How often do you need to feed?" I couldn't tell whether his interest was scientific, or whether he was afraid I might plunge my teeth into his throat at any moment.

Am I right in thinkin' you've maybe been" - he dropped his voice - "the victim of an infamous outrage by the darkies?

I had been a happy normal wife and mother in Orange County until ten years ago, when I was attacked by an evil vampire... and turned into one myself. It's made my life since gross and scary and, let's face it, weird.

All that Anne Rice crap is true, I thought on my way out the door; New Orleans really does have a vampire problem.Besides me, of course.

My first thought was that a tornado had somehow picked me up and carried me off, like in the Wizard of Oz. No old witches pedaled by, and I didn't see any flying farm animals or chicken coops, and after a few agonizing minutes, I fell deep into unconsciousness again.

I put the carpetbag on a ledge, and then, hanging upside down by my razor-clawed feet, slept until sunset. A first for me, and actually quite comfortable.Lord help me.