Read Darkest Journey for Free Online Page B

always worked with at least one other Krewe agent, but it sounded as if he was being sent on his own.
    He knew there were other Krewe agents who came from Louisiana, even if they didn’t come from West Feliciana Parish. Jude McCoy, another recent addition to the Krewe, had been an agent in New Orleans before he joined the Krewe.
    â€œIf you find something, I’ll head down with Jude McCoy by the end of the week,” Jackson said, as if he’d read Ethan’s mind.
    â€œAll right,” Ethan said. He hesitated and then shrugged. He might as well just throw it out there. “I love this job. I’m ready to go wherever the assignment leads, do whatever needs to be done. You know that. But I’m surprised. There are other agents who’ve been with the Krewe a lot longer than I have. Even Jude. He’s pretty new, but not as new as me. We’ve even become friends because we’re both from Louisiana. The Krewe started out in New Orleans. So...not to take anything away from my own abilities, but...why me?”
    â€œWe were specifically asked if you were available,” Jackson said, his light eyes, so striking against his dark hair and tanned flesh, hard on Ethan.
    â€œBy?” Ethan asked.
    â€œA woman who found one of the bodies. She spoke with some friends of hers with connections here, and they made a persuasive case. She’s a local actress, name of Charlene Moreau.”
    â€œAh.” Ethan hoped that the memories suddenly flooding through him weren’t visible on his face.
    â€œYou do know her, then?” Jackson asked.
    â€œI did know her,” Ethan said. “When we were kids. And I know of her now. I’ve seen her on a new cop show they’re filming down there, and in a couple of commercials. I haven’t actually seen her, though, since I was nineteen. She must have been fifteen or sixteen.”
    â€œHow close were you?” Jackson asked.
    How close?
    Jackson must have seen his confusion, because he went on.“When we’re young, we’re often more open to what’s around us, to seeing the kinds of things we here in the Krewe see every day.”
    Ethan remembered being home from college, talking on the phone to his mother about something boring like his laundry. He was already taking criminology courses, and his mother brought up the killings that had occurred just north of Baton Rouge and how people were growing nervous in the entire area around the capital city.
    And then he’d seen the soldier at the window. A Confederate cavalry officer. The man had seemed to be beckoning to him, and at first he’d naturally thought the man was a lost reenactor needing help.
    But the soldier had led him across fields, pausing only to glare at Ethan when Ethan stopped, irritably demanding that the ghost explain what he wanted. Somehow Ethan felt compelled to follow him despite his silence and his strange behavior.
    In the end he’d followed his spectral guide to Grace Episcopal Church.
    That was when he’d seen Charlene Moreau. She’d been tied to a gravestone.
    Her head was bent as she pulled against the knots thathad held her there, and despite the situation she’d been ethereally beautiful in the moonlight, hair tumbling over her shoulders, a flesh-and-blood version of the worn stone angel that stood over a nearby grave with her head bowed deep in prayer.
    Ethan pulled himself back to the present when Jackson spoke.
    â€œApparently Ms. Moreau is friends with Clara Avery and Alexi Cromwell, two young actresses I know from previous cases. They’re here in our area at the moment, involved with Adam Harrison’s theater project—he’s restoring a historic theater and has hired them to deal with creative management—although they’re both from the New Orleans area originally. Both of them are also gifted—or cursed—the same way we in the Krewe are.” He paused, then went on. “And