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Brent breathed a deep sigh as he looked around Char That was definitely a word to describe the architecture, the handsos the locals called iron lace The sound of the music, the colors, the architecture itself Yes, the place had charm

And once upon a time he had loved it

But that was then, and this was now, and if he’d never cooing on?" he asked as a patrolht the traffic to a stop

"Debate," the taxi driver said

"Debate?" Brent said, and frowned

"Politicians, and I’ They both clai to keep the history and unique quality of the place while cleaning up cri that he knohat he’s doing, that his record is great, and we’re already on the hile the younger guy is clai, hasn’t h… well, you know It’s politics Everyone swears to move the moon, and everyone out there is a liar, just the same" He winked at Brent in the rearview h, hasn’t it?"

"Crioes up Hey, no es Those that have want to keep what they have Those that don’t have want to get We have real poverty in some areas, some pretty rich folk in others Sae the conditions… well, that’s what both our boys say they uy you dislike the least? Well, both these guys are likable, so I guess we can’t lose"

"That’s good"

"I think so But then, I love this place You visit often?"

"No"

"Where you from?"

Brent started to say, All over

But he didn’t He told the truth

"Here Right here"

"Yeah? Well, welcoain

They passed the police station on Royal

At last they ca to stay, after crashing at a hotel out by the airport the night before

He paid the driver, met the hefty man ned the place, paid and found his roo here was like having his blood drained fro ring The pain in his head crashed like hurricane waves on the shore

Drapes were drawn, door was closed… darkness

All he needed was a little time And he could adjust

He didn’t want to adjust

But he would

Chapter 5

A year and a day

That thought kept going through Nikki’s head as she stood in the graveyard Andrea hadn’t hailed from New Orleans, but she didn’t have any family left anywhere else, either She’d been orphaned, like Nikki, and had grown up in a series of foster homes

There had been no one to call Andrea had been out of school for two years, traveling and taking odd jobs along the way She’d left no naone to Tulane and probably still had friends in the area, but who they were and how they could be reached, Nikki hadn’t had the faintest idea

And because there was no place Andrea had called home and no one she had called family, Nikki had decided that she would take care of all the arrange buried in Nikki’s family vault, since there was plenty of room and no one left to fill it The DuMondes had lived in the area since the late 1700s Where her very early ancestors had been buried, Nikki didn’t know But in the 1800s they had acquired a plot in the Garden District Someone at some tiels guarded the wrought-iron doors to the elaborate fae chiseled letters

The last interment had been her parents, killed in an autorandparents, gone just a few years ago

As she stood in front of the door, she realized that it was truly sad, but she barely remembered either her mother or her father She had pictures, of course, and because of the pictures, she had convinced herself that she remembered much more than she really did

A year and a day…

The time it took for the fierce New Orleans heat to cre soul Then the ashes could be scraped back into a holding cell in the niche within the vault, and a new body could be interred There were actually twelve burial vaults within the family mausoleum Nikki had decided that Andrea should be buried with her own folks She certainly didn’t believe that corpses or remains could find comfort with one another, but it made her feel a little better to know that they would be interred together