“Are we still going to have our pre-Halloween ghost tour?” Hobb asked.
“Pleeeease,” several of the changelings said at once, eager as puppies.
Griffen found himself smiling.
It was all about priorities.
Forty-eight
No matter what type of tourist you are, the Quarter has something for you.
Beautiful scenery for the shutterbugs, endless stores of all ranges of quality for the shopaholics, bars and clubs for the party animals, exotic and local cuisine for the gourmands, museums and galleries for the hoi polloi. Even clowns making balloon animals for the children. Though if you really want to experience the Quarter, it’s always best to leave the kiddies at home.
For the most part Griffen had sampled all the various facets of the tourist-milking machine that is the French Quarter. He reveled in the low and the high. He even occasionally poked his head in the countless T-shirt shops to see if there was anything clever. Except for the tours. For all his months there, he hadn’t been on a single tour. It just wasn’t something that the locals tended to do, and it wasn’t something that had any particular draw for him.
That was before he found himself made a moderator. With everything that was going on at the conclave, Griffen felt driven to try to keep things together. He was holding the bag, but that didn’t mean he was going to choose the easy route and drop it.
One of the activities that had been planned was a group excursion with the Haunted History Tour. Again, Griffen knew very little about the tours themselves though he had seen them around. Groups of fifteen to thirty tourists would gather around a storyteller as he spoke of the Quarter’s sordid past. Most of it was made-up; if one listened to rumor, it was invented on the spot. A really bored tour guide could be the worst, or best, thing that a tourist might encounter.
One of Estella’s people had offered to give the tour, but Griffen politely declined. Not only did he want the conclave members to have a “normal” Quarter experience, he was hoping that most of them would keep their eccentricities in check with a normal tour guide.
Hoping, not expecting.
This was actually the most mingling he had seen among the various groups in the conclave. It was hard to form little cliques when you were all clustering around a single storyteller. Also, it was mostly followers, not leaders. Drake, Robin, and Hobb were there, but not Tink. Several of the voodoo practitioners had attended, but Estella was busy. Even Lowell was absent, though a few of his vampires lurked at the edges.
The garou were absent entirely, as were the higher shape-shifters. True to his word, Tail had invited the female shifter from the demonstration to dinner. Griffen had suggested the Desire Oyster Bar, and had a discreet word with Amos, one of the waiters there. He had convinced Amos not only to let him pick up the tab, but to be sure not to tell that he had done it. A small miracle in itself. As far as the couple were concerned, it was on the house.
Of the animal-control people, only Johansson had attended. Griffen gave him an uncomfortable glance when he saw the man approaching the gathering tour group. Johansson saw the look and walked up to Griffen directly.
“I want you to know,” he said without preamble, “Margie and me, we don’t blame you. This was his town, and he should have known the risks better than anyone.”
With that he turned away from Griffen and joined the tour group. Griffen let him; after all, what more could be said?
As the tour actually got started, Griffen more or less tuned out the guide. History really wasn’t his passion. Yet another reason he had avoided the tours in the past. He wasn’t really paying attention till after their first stop, when one of the changelings spoke up.
“What do you mean we don’t get to go inside?” Drake said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the tour guide said, “but all the sites on today’s tour are, of course, private residences. We don’t have permission—”
“You mean we are just going to stand on the sidewalk and listen to you talk?” cut in someone else.
“Well, one of our stops is Jean Lafayette’s Blacksmith Shop, one of the oldest taverns in the Quarter. It is said that many of the pirates who used to run with Lafayette still come back to have one last drink at their old… haunt.”
“A bar… go figure.”
“ ‘Haunt’? Is that the best you can come up with?”
“A piece of eight says he will use the line ‘dead drunk’ before the night is over.”
The tour guide’s jaw tightened noticeably, and Griffen almost stepped in. However, he also knew that tourists, any tourists, put the locals through worse. For now, he would just hang in the background, and pay a little bit more attention.
The tour moved on, and after a few more stops and unimpressive narratives, the guide obviously decided it was time to spice things up a bit. He glanced a bit nervously at the changelings. Probably, Griffen figured, wondering who in the group were their parents.
“Now, this was the château of a famous marquis in the late eighteenth century. In the tradition of the Marquis De Sade, this perverse nobleman entertained members of the French aristocracy by beating and tormenting servants and local wayfarers. It is said—”
“Said by who?”
Griffen stifled a laugh.
“Tha… What?” the guide said.
“Said by who?”
“Yes, you keep using that line, but never quote a source.”
That last was from one of the vampires, who was beginning to sidle up to the guide as he became more and more distraught. Nothing like an easy meal.
“Not to mention completely glossing over your facts. You didn’t mention the marquis’s name, the actual year, or even what ‘aristocrats’ he was entertaining,” Johansson said.
“And ‘wayfarers’? Come on, man,” Drake said.
The tour guide pressed on, showing much admirable determination.
“It is said that you can still hear the moans of pain from his victims.”
Then a woman Griffen had not yet seen at the conclave stepped forward.
“See, now you are way off. The marquis’s château was three blocks from here. This was an old brothel. And believe me, it’s not moans of pain you are hearing.”
The tour guide threw his hands up.
“Moving on!” he said as he walked down the street.
The others all seemed to share a glance before following him. Only Griffen paused, some instinct in him telling him to watch the woman who’d spoken. She turned to him and winked, before turning transparent. The specter walked toward the building in question as she faded away.
When he caught up to the group, they were standing behind Saint Peter’s Cathedral. He was just in time to hear a line so tired and clichéd, he was shocked that he hadn’t heard it earlier.
“And if you listen closely, you will hear them,” the guide said to wrap up whatever tale he had been spinning.
Almost as one, the entire group turned and cocked their heads. Listening.
They waited, and waited, and the guide started to fidget. “Nnoooo…” one said carefully, “can’t hear a thing.”
“There are going to be ghosts on this ghost tour, right?” Griffen laughed.
“Maybe if we had a goat.”
That came from one of the voodoo practitioners. Griffen was almost sure he was kidding.
“Hey, isn’t Jackson Square on the other side of that church?” Robin asked.
Again, there was a pause, and almost as one the group surged past the guide, down Pirate Alley, and into the Square. Griffen smiled and, as he passed the befuddled guide, clapped him on the shoulder and tipped him a twenty. It did Griffen much good to see some of the conclave actually unified for a change.