Midnight Bayou

books, the fat files, the memos. All of it, the debris of the lawyer, seemed very distant to him now.
    “A few pieces I had in my study up there that should work in the library.”
    He picked up a brass paperweight, set it down. Slipped a hand into his pocket, jiggled change.
    “You going to tell me what’s on your mind, or just pace until you dig a trench in my carpet?” With his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up, Remy kicked back in his chair and began to swish a bright green Slinky from palm to palm. “You’re wearing me out.”
    “I’ve told you some of the things that’ve been happening.”
    “Got a firsthand account of them myself when I dropped in on Saturday. I’d still feel better if you told me that piano music we heard was from some radio you forgot to turn off.”
    “I guess I’ll have to get a piano for the ladies’ parlor, since that seems to be the spot. I like to play anyway, when I remember to sit down at one.”
    Remy shifted the Slinky to vertical, let the colorful spiral drip into itself. “So, you came by to tell me you’re in the market for a piano?”
    “I bought a watch today.”
    “And you want to show it off? Want me to call in my assistant, some of the law clerks?”
    “It was Lucian Manet’s watch.”
    “No shit?” The Slinky, sloshed into a whole, was tossed aside. “How do you know? Where’d you get ahold of it?”
    “Little shop in the Quarter.” He drew out the box, set it on Remy’s desk. “Take a look at it.”
    Obliging, Remy took off the lid. “Elegant, if you want something you’re going to have to dig out whenever you want to know what time it is. Heavy,” he added when he picked it up.
    “You don’t . . . feel anything from it?”
    “Feel anything?”
    “Look on the back, Remy.”
    “Names and dates are right,” Remy concluded. “Hell of a stroke of luck, you stumbling on this.”
    “Luck? I don’t think so. I go into a shop, buy Lena a ring, then—”
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa, just back up there a minute. A ring?”
    “I told you I was going to marry her.” Declan shrugged. “I found the ring. It doesn’t hurt to have it ahead of schedule. But that’s not the point.”
    “Pretty damn big point, if you ask me. She know you’re up to this?”
    “I told her how I felt, what I wanted. I’m letting her stew on it awhile. Can we get back to the watch?”
    “ Et là! You always were mule-headed. Go ahead.”
    “I walk into that shop, decide I need a watch because mine’s acting up. I decide I need a pocket watch even though I’ve never used one, never thought about using one. Then, I see that one, and I know. I know it was his, I know she bought it for him for his birthday. I know what it says on the back before I read it. Exactly what it says. Because I heard it in my head.”
    “I don’t know what to think about that.” Remy raked his fingers through his hair. “Isn’t there something about how some people touch an object and get images from it? Its history or whatever?”
    “It’s called psychometry. I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on paranormal science in my spare time,” Declan explained when Remy frowned at him. “But I’ve neverhad anything like that happen before. Lena’s got a theory. That this is a reincarnation deal.”
    Remy pursed his lips, set the watch back in its box. “I guess I’d be more inclined to put some stock in that rather than the psycho whatever.”
    “If it is, then the house, now this watch, are triggering past-life memories. Pretty weird.”
    “The whole thing’s been weird since the get-go, cher. ”
    “Here’s the kicker. If I accept that I was Lucian, then I know Lena was Abigail. What I don’t know is if I’m supposed to bring her into the house, to make things right from before. Or if I’m supposed to keep her away from it, and resolve the cycle that way.”
    I n the Vieux Carre, where Lena prepared to leave her apartment for the bar and the afternoon shift, she opened the door and stepped into another cycle. An old one.
    “Baby!” Lilibeth Simone threw open her arms.
    Sluggish with shock, Lena was unable to move back before they wrapped around her like chains. Trapped, she was assaulted with impressions. Too much perfume that didn’t quite cover the smell of stale smoke, the bony form honed down by years of hard living. Sticky layers of hair-spray over curls dyed black as pitch.
    And through it all seeped her own