Chapter 7
THE FRENCH QUARTER HAS THE soul of a shape-shifter, and tonight it’s a dark temptress.
With Halloween right around the corner, the air grows more alive.
There is something different about this time of year: The smells turn spicier, with hints of nutmeg and cinnamon reaching around every corner.
The balconies and galleries are covered in cobwebs and pumpkins, with string lights and skeletons adorning almost every building.
The air is lively and perfectly haunted, a welcome reprieve from the fog that has seemed to hang over Wren’s home lately.
For just a moment, Wren feels a surge of appreciation flow through her.
She is grateful: grateful to live in this beautiful place, to have air in her lungs and a pair of strong legs to explore it with.
She’s decided to embrace it for one night, standing on the corner of Bourbon and Orleans, inhaling the atmosphere, and trying to take in the electric feeling of the brilliant evening.
Wren continues to make her way toward Fritzel’s Jazz Bar, where, in an impulsive break from her self-flagellation, she’s agreed to meet Maya for drinks and girl time.
She passes by a woman dressed as a dead fairy, all bones and glitter with beautiful hazy wings and a wreath of dried flowers in her hair.
The costume looks homemade but by a very skilled hand.
Wren can’t help but compliment her, and she responds with a wide grin bursting with pride.
As she walks through the front door of Fritzel’s, the calm of the moment is immediately replaced by loud, raucous energy. She finds herself cringing a bit as she pushes past throngs of people inside, suddenly regretting her moment of extroversion.
She genuinely loves seeing Maya. With how chaotic life has been, how out of control she has felt, Wren is drawn to Maya’s warmth and her ability to switch from police officer to spiritual goddess in a matter of seconds.
But she just can’t seem to get herself excited about much lately—least of all socialization.
A live jazz band is setting up on a small stage, and patrons are packed in like sardines in a can.
With the thrums of practice chords, the clinks of glasses, and the swell of voices, Wren’s initial hesitance begins to wear off, giving way to an ache for her old life, when meeting someone she loves for drinks was a treat instead of a chore.
“You look like shit, babe,” Maya says loudly, standing from her place at the bar with a grin.
Wren laughs a response, shaking her head and meeting Maya’s embrace in a hug.
“I know! Someday I’ll pick up the hairbrush again,” she says, sliding into the seat next to her.
This will be good—welcome time away from home, away from memories and ghosts.
Besides, it’s rare to find a place that has a moody, comfortable atmosphere and music that doesn’t make you want to rip your ears off.
Maya playfully touches an errant strand of hair escaping from Wren’s messy bun. “Don’t just pick up your hairbrush,” she says. “Use that thing.”
“I need Cher and Dionne to give me a makeover,” Wren says, snatching an olive from the stockpile in front of Maya and popping it into her mouth. When she lifts her eyes, she can see confusion painting Maya’s expression. “Clueless,” Wren says curtly.
Maya shakes her head. “That reference is dated as hell.”
“See? I need to get out more.”
The bartender leans forward, slapping his hand on the counter in front of them. “What can I get ya?” he asks.
Startled, Wren’s mind goes blank. “Oh! Hi, yeah, um …” She notices that the woman next to her is drinking what looks to be a martini. “I’ll have what she’s having, extra dirty, please.”
The bartender nods and begins the potion-making process while the music starts to swell.
For a moment, Wren disassociates while Maya recalls a wild story from work that day.
She tries to stay focused, feeling the warmth of her friend’s voice soothing some of the sadness that she’s been wearing as armor lately.
When the bartender slides the drink in front of her, a bit of it sloshes out, startling her back into the present. She picks it up and takes a long sip.
“Now spill,” Maya says. “How was the trip to the underworld?” The visit with Jeremy. Wren is still rattled despite how much she resents it. Maya’s description feels more on point than she probably realizes.
Wren sighs, shaking her head before looking Maya in the eyes. “It was exactly that: hell.”
Maya’s expression is filled with sympathy. One of her greatest attributes is her ability to sympathize without even a hint of judgment or pity. She doesn’t speak now, just listens.
Wren searches for the right words, tracing the rim of the glass with her finger. “He’s impossible.” She shakes her head, feeling herself thrust back in front of him. “It’s like being locked in a room with your childhood bully.”
“Yeah, if your childhood bully crisscrossed the country trying to murder you,” Maya comments.
Wren can’t help but laugh, and Maya’s sly grin tells her that was the intention all along.
“Yeah, I guess I have the ultimate bully, huh?”
Maya takes a sip of her Sazerac, pausing before she responds. When she does, she’s measured and warm. “You don’t have the ultimate bully; you have the ultimate fan. You know how to take control in every situation I have ever seen you in, so you can figure it out in this one.”
Wren is used to people telling her to be strong, to hold her head up and keep moving forward.
From the moment she escaped Jeremy’s hunting grounds, she had friends and family telling her she would be okay and that she would get through it.
She held her head up like they told her, and she powered through, finding her own way to carve out a life separate from the trauma she endured, taking on a new name to further distance herself from what she went through.
Then, when it came out that she was the one who got away, the new life she’d crafted had to be skillfully mixed with the old one, and she’d done that too.
She has always prevailed, always come out the other side battered but still throwing punches.
But since Richard was taken from her, the fight hasn’t been feeling as worth it.
The lights have been dimmed, and the fire has burned out, turning into a pile of embers, dangerously hot when touched.
Richard’s murder was why the visit with Jeremy felt so much heavier, so assaultive.
It’s food she didn’t want mixed on her plate that’s now being forced down her throat in one foul bite.
She didn’t take control; she just swallowed it.
Maya knows better than to tell her to keep her head up, that she’ll be okay, like everyone else says. She’s telling Wren to do something of which she knows her to be capable: take control.
“He just knows how to make me feel an inch tall,” Wren says quietly, feeling like reevaluating the entire approach she went into that visit with.
Maya cups her glass with both hands, her mouth in a tight line as a dark curl falls delicately across her forehead. “But you aren’t an inch tall. You’re a mountain. He knows that, and he always has.”
Wren laughs, sipping her drink and savoring the sharp tang of the olive brine for a moment.
For an impulse order, it seems to be hitting all the right spots.
Suddenly she’s acutely aware of the tightness in her jaw and the way her shoulders are trying to hit the ceiling.
She relaxes them and allows the drink to do the same for her jaw.
Maya’s words are so simple but so hard to internalize.
Her instincts try to tell her they are just words of encouragement uttered by a friend who cares, but something implores her to believe them.
“I have to start seeing myself the way you do,” she says, eyeing the band behind them.
Maya shakes her head. “You know you’re a fucking colossus. You are one of the only people I have ever seen John Leroux defer to.”
The shift in topic is welcome, helpful even. It’s as if Maya is working from a script that called for a scene change.
“Honestly, John needs to take care of himself. He’s been so wrapped up in those missing girls’ cases. He’s all over the place.”
Maya nods, swallowing her sip. “I’ll make sure he hydrates,” she says with a smirk. “But things are just starting to get interesting with this nun we connected both of the girls to, Sister Moreau.”
“I about died when he told me that lead. I recently saw John in a church for the first time, and he looked like he was about to turn to dust, so a meeting with a nun ought to be something.” Wren looks off, remembering their meeting with Philip Trudeau in the Berkshires.
John’s demeanor had been combative from the second they walked through the door.
He deals in cold hard facts, and for him, religion is a tough pill to swallow.
“Yeah, I’ve been looking into that pastor in Massachusetts on the side because I can tell Leroux is hung up on him. Were he and Rose really thick as thieves growing up?” Maya asks, her tone hinting that there is more to her question, more that she knows.
Wren nods, her antenna raising almost immediately.
She’d worried that she and Leroux were at a bit of a dead end on all things Trudeau—especially with his focus on two urgent cases right now—but she had forgotten that Leroux wasn’t her only friend in the department.
She calculates how to gently pry more information from Maya.
Wren has started to pick up on Maya’s tells, and she can sense a hesitation.
Maya’s gaze is searching for something to tell her that Wren can handle whatever it is, whatever her information could lead to.
“I love the extra-credit work,” Wren says playfully. “Find anything interesting?” She tries to keep her tone casual, not wanting to fully reveal her anticipation.