need you here to take care of things. I’m just going to a conference.”
“Still,” Sean observed, “you’re awfully tense. Do you want a drink?”
“I’m not tense,” Jessica informed him quickly. Yes, she realized, she was. She had practically snapped at Sean. She was tense—and she had no idea why. “I’m sorry. It’s just that…” She stared at her friends. She just couldn’t sit still any longer. She stood suddenly, feigning a yawn. “Guys, excuse me, will you? I leave tomorrow, and I guess I’m a little on edge.”
“I knew it.” Sean said. “You are worried about your trip.”
“No, just antsy, I guess. But I think I’ll head home,” Jessica said.
“I think I’ll leave, too,” Stacey said, rising. “It’s too bad you’re not going on a real vacation. You need one. You aren’t yourself tonight. Maybe psychologists need psychologists more than anyone else. Maybe you should be taking a trip to a mountain cabin. This is just more pressure, and very strange. I mean, seriously, who ever heard of a psychologists’ convention in Romania?”
“I’m an experienced traveler, so don’t worry about me. This will be almost like a vacation, I’ll do all kinds of wonderful touristy things,” Jessica assured her.
“Will you go to Dracula’s castle, walk in the mist-shrouded woods and listen for werewolves?” Maggie asked.
“Exactly,” Jessica said, smiling. “I’ll be back in a week.”
Sean laughed. “I hardly think Jessica needs to worry about vampires and werewolves. For God’s sake, she’s from New Orleans, land of voodoo—and all the crazies who think they’re zombies and vampires.”
“He has a point,” Jessica assured Maggie.
“I know, it’s just that…I don’t know. I just don’t like it.”
“I’m going, and it’s going to be a great experience. I’m grateful you all care. I love you, and good night.” Jessica hugged them all, then left, walking past the stage on her way out. She lifted a hand and waved to Big Jim, the trumpet player.
He was a huge man, his skin was like ebony, yet he played his instrument with a delicacy that belied his size. There was an angel’s touch in his music. He also had great instincts about people and situations, perhaps handed down by his family, many of whom were known in the local voodoo community.
Like Sean and Maggie, he’d befriended her when she’d first moved to the parish. He looked at her now, shaking his head with a sigh. Then he quietly mouthed the words to her, “Be careful.”
She mouthed in reply, “Always.”
He still didn’t look happy. But then, Big Jim’s mother had been a voodoo priestess, and he was a definite believer that things weren’t always what they seemed. She lowered her head, hiding the secret grin that teased her lips. Bless him. He was such a good guy. Just like a big brother.
Band member Barry Larson, lanky, in his thirties, a transplant from somewhere in the Midwest, covered his mike with his free hand. “Hey, gorgeous. You have a good trip and come home safe, okay?”
“Of course.”
He smiled deeply. He was nice, a little bit geeky. She’d been afraid when she first met him that he’d had something of a crush on her, but he’d never said anything and over time had become a good friend.
She left the club, glad that the French Quarter was back to its busy, even a little bit crazy, self. It was just around eleven, a time when the streets were at their busiest. She quickly walked the three blocks to her house, then, at her gates, paused for a minute. There was a stirring in the air. Rain tomorrow, she thought, and looked up at the sky.
She didn’t like what she saw. As she hurried toward the front door, she reminded herself that Gareth Miller was in the cottage at the rear, once the old smokehouse. Gareth was great. In return for a place to live, he kept an eye on the place, and on her and Stacey. He was a quiet man, kind of like a reticent hippie, with his slight slouch and longish, clean but unkempt hair.
He was another of the good friends she’d made here, and her home was safe in his keeping.
Even so, she paused again halfway up the walkway, staring heavenward. Again the sense of urgency assailed her, a feeling that she needed to be moving quickly.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe I do need a real vacation, she thought. Or maybe I’m just losing my mind.
She almost laughed aloud at the idea of a vacation when she was feeling this terrible need to hurry, to get ahead of something….
Of someone?
Too bad. There was nothing she could do about it now. The plane would leave the next day, and she would be on it.
Jessica couldn’t sleep. She lay on her bed, strangely aware of time passing.
In the middle of the night, she walked outside to her balcony, which faced the street. She loved her house, and it was sheer luck that she’d been able to buy it. Amazingly, the winds and flooding from hurricane Katrina that had devastated so much of the parish had done very little damage to the Quarter or her house. The house was quite large, and she was able to keep it because, with Stacey’s help, she ran it as a very selective bed-and-breakfast. Her practice, which she ran out of the house, was a good one; in psychology, she had found the perfect vocation. And, on the side, she designed one-of-a-kind costumes for various Mardi Gras krewes.
From a distance, she could very faintly hear the sounds of music and laughter, carried on the breeze from the French Quarter.
She looked at the sky again. Absurdly, it appeared as if there was a hint of red in the night air. A hint of red that seemed to grow stronger as she watched and the darkness seemed to take almost physical form around her.
“Ridiculous,” she told herself.
She imagined herself with a shrink. “I don’t actually see the dark…I feel it.”
For a moment, a chill seized her as the darkness seemed to loom, like a hint, a warning. A deep red darkness…
It made her feel as if she was being hunted. Stalked.
She stepped back into her room, locking the balcony doors, trying to fight the feeling.
But she was oddly afraid. As she hadn’t been in ages.
She stayed awake, staring at the sky, certain the darkness was turning a still deeper red as she watched.
Her friends had felt it, too, she thought. That was why they’ve been so nervous about her trip.
This was ridiculous, she told herself. When the conference had been announced, it had immediately intrigued her. And now she was committed to speak. She had to go, and that was that, even though her initial excitement was gone.
What the hell had changed? she wondered. Or was it all in her mind?
Suddenly, she felt dizzy. The world before her seemed to shift and change. She was no longer in her bedroom but outside, staring up at a high ridge, and atop the ridge stood a man. He was exceptionally tall, a cape billowing around him in the breeze.
And he was the epitome of evil.
Evil that was stalking her. An ancient evil that lurked somewhere in a strange and distant memory that couldn’t be.
The Master.
The name flashed unbidden to her mind. She banished it immediately.
The vision faded. She was home again, in her own room, the peace and beauty barely disturbed by distant sounds from the street, the scent of magnolia blossoms heavy on the air.
She was losing her mind, she told herself impatiently. She needed some sleep.
The next day, alighting in Romania, she