by Cate Tiernan
Good, I thought. I hope he never sleeps well again. I started to think about spells to accomplish this, conveniently forgetting the threefold rule, and then Axelle said, “Everyone join hands.”
Ouida was on one side of me. On my other side was Sophie, who seemed nice and shy and had a stronger French accent than most of them. Next to her was Richard, then Andre, then Jules, Thais, Manon, Daedalus, and Axelle on Ouida’s other side.
Daedalus started chanting, and we began to walk slowly dalmonde. I actually didn’t recognize what Daedalus was saying—it sounded like it might be Old French, but I could make out only a few words: vent and pierre, cercle, plume. Wind and stone, circle, feather. They didn’t make sense. The others joined in, but Thais and I met eyes and shrugged. My sister looked curious and cautious but kept in step and carefully walked right inside the large circle.
We began walking faster as their voices seemed to separate like ribbons to intertwine and lace through and under and around each other. This happened in my regular coven too, and I always loved this part, the weaving together of the whole. Wisps of magick started to swirl around us, like fine threads of cotton candy. I waited for the familiar rush of magick to fill me, but I felt dull around the edges, not fully present.
Against my will, I glanced across the circle and saw Andre watching Thais. She wasn’t looking back. Quick rage filled my chest, and I realized that my anger was getting in my way.
It was almost impossible to release it. I wanted to rake my fingernails down his face—almost as much as I wanted to grab him and kiss him hard, make him forget my sister. Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, putting both of them out of my mind. I tried to release all emotion, all feelings, to open myself to receive magick.
We quickened our pace, and I kept my eyes closed, concentrating on being here and being blank, a blank canvas for magick to color. I caught more words: calice, l’eau, cendres. Chalice, water, ashes. No idea what they meant. But at last it worked: a familiar excitement and anticipation came over me, and magick began to swell within my chest. I breathed it in like light, letting myself feel the joy, the completeness of being surrounded by magick. It dwarfed everything else, and from this exalted height, my anguish over Andre’s betrayal seemed far away.
I opened my eyes and looked at Thais, wondering what she was thinking and feeling. Her eyes were open wide, as if in astonishment, her face transformed from wary to welcoming. I smiled at her, and she smiled back breathlessly. She felt the exhilaration of magick too, and it was her first time. I was glad we were together now, despite all the mixed feelings I had about her, about us, about our future.
I felt the lovely rush of power and life, felt myself meld with the other forces in this circle, that heady sense of connection, the joining of spirits. Our circle moved swiftly, round like the earth, like the sun, eternal like the tides of the oceans. The chant reached a crescendo and I found myself joining in: Un calice du vent, un cercle des cendres, une plume de Pierre, un collier d’eau. Again and again we sang the words, and though I thought I got their translation, they still didn’t make sense to me. I offered up a prayer to the Déesse: please help me and my sister become what we are supposed to become. Please help us keep safe.
Then, as if one, the circle suddenly stopped. We threw our hands in the air, releasing our energy, sending out our power, which is the only way to receive the power back into you. I felt stronger within myself, felt I could work miraculous spells, and then Ouida and I were smiling and hugging.
The ten of us were flushed, panting, glorying in the aftereffects of magick. Thais was hugging Sophie. Hating myself, my eyes sought Andre. His face was dark, he was breathing hard, his emotions jangled and discordant. He looked like he had when we were twined together, kissing, when I had been offering him everything, and he had almost taken it. I sent out a quick general thanks that we hadn’t actually gotten farther than that.
Then Thais was in front of me, blocking my view. I saw faint tear tracks on her pink cheeks as she put her arms around me. I hugged her back, feeling less alone, less wretched. I had a sister. I think it truly only hit me right then: I had a sister, forever. We shared the same blood, the same bone. We were one person, split into two. We would never be alone again. It seemed huge and amazing in a way that it hadn’t until then, and my eyes filled with tears.
“What did you think?” I whispered.
Her face, so eerily like my own, was solemn.“It was . . . scary,” she said finally, trying to gather her thoughts. “And . . . so beautiful. I wish—” She broke off, biting her lip. “I wish I had never known of anything so beautiful, so powerful.” Her face was almost sad.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“Before, I didn’t know what I was missing,” she said softly. “Now I do. And now I know . . . I have to have it. I’ll do anything to feel it again.”
I nodded. What has a front has a back. And the bigger the front, the bigger the back. The joy and beauty of magick were married to the awful responsibility of wielding it. The pleasure of calling on magick was tempered by the need to do so.
“Did you get any of the words?” she asked me.
I nodded. “Some, but they didn’t make sense. Part of it was, ‘A chalice of wind, a circle of ashes, a feather of stone, a necklace of water.’ All connected like that.”
Thais looked thoughtful, repeating the words to herself. “You don’t know what it meant?”
“No—never heard it before. We can ask Ouida,” I said.
“Now I think it’s time.” Ouida’s clear voice cut through the lingering effects of the magick. “Time to know the truth. The whole truth.”
Thais
Maybe I’d had enough truth for one day. I felt drained. My skin was still alive and glowing from what I’d just discovered. I didn’t know how it had happened, where it had come from, or even what “magick” really was. I only knew that I’d felt it, and for a few minutes, I’d been part of everything. I hadn’t been alone, everything had made sense, and my pain had lessened. If that was magick, sign me up.
“Can we go back downstairs?” Manon asked in her little-girl voice. “It’s hot up here.”
The whole truth. I thought about finding Clio, realizing she and Petra were witches, finding out Luc was really Andre, finding out he was a witch. I really didn’t think I could take any more. Could I escape somehow? But Ouida seemed to have a plan, and Clio looked determined.
Downstairs, every time I glanced at Clio, she was watching Luc. Her face was angry, but I recognized another emotion as well: desire. She’d said that she’d just been using him, that she didn’t love him. It wasn’t true. She’d wondered if he was the one behind the attacks. I didn’t know—when I tried to follow that line of thought, my brain just shut down.
“Sit here, Thais,” said Ouida, gesturing to the sofa. I was stuck. Clio sat at the other end of the sofa, and Richard sat between us. I couldn’t wait to hear his story.
Axelle, Ouida, Daedalus, and Jules all looked at each other, as if silently figuring out who should start. My curiosity was mixed with dread about what might be coming. After today, everything that had happened in my life before New Orleans would be gone forever, as if it had happened to someone else. I felt Luc’s eyes on me and Clio’s eyes on him. I ignored him as best I could, but heat rose in my cheeks just from being in the same room.
“Well, really, our story started quite a long time ago,” Ouida said slowly. “Our families came from France, through Canada, and settled in southern Louisiana, not far from New Orleans. That was in the late 1600s. There were fifteen families, fifty-eight people total. They lived in peace and made their lives and homes in their new chosen land. They practiced Bonne Magie and stayed true to the old ways.
“ This continued for almost a hundred years,” Ouida went on. “As with any group of people, there were leaders and followers—people who were stronger and people who were weaker. Within the fifteen families and the new familie
s that had been created by intermarrying, there were several different covens.”
“Eight, I think,” said Jules, frowning in thought.
“Now, I have to tell you a bit about Magie Noir,” Ouida said, taking a deep breath.
“Dark magick?” Clio said in surprise.
“Yes,” Ouida went on more firmly. “In our community, young people, teenagers, often experimented with Magie Noir before they made their rite of ascension. The corollary today would be experimenting with drugs, or drinking, or sex.”
“Or all three,” Richard murmured, and my skin crawled. Bizarrely, there was something very likable about Richard, but he was also just so young to be so dark. It was creepy.
“In those days, it was usually Magie Noir,” Ouida said. “ They were punished if caught, but in general the feeling was that they would play with it, get it out of their systems, and then be ready to settle down into the community as they should. And for the most part, that’s what happened.”
“Until Melita,” Daedalus said, his voice heavy with memory, as if it had all happened just last year.
“Yes,” Ouida said. “Until Melita. Melita was a very powerful witch, with the kind of power that comes along once every hundred years. She learned fast, soaking up information, rites, history like a sponge. Before she was sixteen, she made her rite of ascension, thus giving her even more power.”
I had been watching Ouida, but when I looked around the room, I was surprised by people’s expressions. Almost everyone here wore a mantle of gloom. These witches who only ten minutes before had been singing with clear joy now looked like they were immersed in sadness and pain. I risked glancing at Luc, and he looked even worse than before. He met my eyes, a still, speculative look on his face. I shifted and looked away from him, my heart pounding.
“The community ignored what was happening and closed their eyes to the fact that Melita wasn’t just passing through her Magie Noir phase—she was reveling in it, pursuing it, and working hard to increase her power all the time, through dark and dangerous methods.”
Jules lowered his head and rubbed his eyes with one hand, as if suddenly tired beyond words. Daedalus for once had no used-car-salesman’s smile, but looked drawn and stiff.
“One night Melita was in the woods, performing her dark rites. It’s still unclear whether she caused this to happen or whether it was just there and she found it—but she came upon a small, bubbling spring, un Source. The water was red-tinted and very cold, and she drank from it.”
“She said she made it, conjured it,” said Richard, and Daedalus whirled on him.
“I don’t believe it. It was sheer happenstance that led her to it.”
“However it happened,” Ouida continued, “from that day on, Melita was never ill. When the whole community had the flu and more than twenty people died, Melita never got sick. Any small injury healed unnaturally quickly. She was strong and healthy in a way that few people were in those days, before antibiotics and vaccinations. But more important, her magick increased maybe a hundredfold.
“Several years passed. There had always been people whose magick seemed stronger or more true, but now Melita overshadowed the best of them. It was obvious that she had special powers. The boys in the village fell in love with her, but she didn’t care for them—only for power. She began to dominate the whole community, both through her force of will and by her magick. The Magie Noir had taken hold of her, and unlike other people, it didn’t let her go.”
“She studied the ancient texts,” Jules said quietly. “And researched herbology and astrology. Within seven years, she was the strongest witch anyone had ever seen. At the end of this seven years, Melita had devised a plan to forever consolidate her power by a ritual at the Source, this time with twelve carefully chosen fellow witches. These witches would represent a cross section of abilities, affinities, ages, sexes, and so on, as her research had indicated was necessary.”
“There was an older man,” said Daedalus, his voice dull. He was looking at the floor and didn’t raise his eyes. “An elder in the community—the mayor, if you will.”
“There was a powerful, headstrong woman,” said Axelle, sounding sad and un-Axelle-like.
“There was a virginal young woman,” said Sophie, not looking at anyone.
“There was an older woman, a wise healer,” Ouida said. “And there was a female slave.”
“And another slave,” said Jules. “Arrogant and ambitious.”
“ There was a girl,” Manon said slowly. “Who had not yet reached puberty.”
“ There was a heartless rake,” said Luc wearily.
It was then that all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and my blood turned cold. My breaths became faster and shallower, and I watched this play unfold with horror.
“ There was a boy.” Richard’s voice was bitter and full of pain. “Halfway to becoming a man.”
“There was an innocent young man,” said Ouida, “who was emotional and easily led.”
“There was the village outcast, a woman of loose morals,” said Daedalus with distaste.
“And there was Melita’s younger sister, Cerise,” said Axelle. “She was unmarried but pregnant. No one knew who the father was.”
“The baby was due in two months,” said Sophie, sounding near tears.
My eyes wide, I sought out Clio’s face. Silent knowledge passed between us: our vision. They were describing our vision. Holy crap.
“Through various means—bribes, threats, coercion—she rounded up these twelve witches and performed the ritual with them,” Ouida said. “During the ritual, they all drank from the spring, thereby increasing all their magickal powers—beyond where Melita’s had been.”
“During the rite, Melita called on all the dark forces she knew,” Sophie said softly. “Forces the others didn’t know existed. And her magick was so strong, and the combined forces of the thirteen were so strong, that it called down the wrath of heaven.”
My eyebrows must have gone up because Ouida explained, “It called down a tremendous surge of power that entered Melita and poured into the souls of the twelve with her.”
“Dark power,” Jules said.
“It stunned everyone,” said Manon, her voice wispy and light. “It felt . . . like the beginning and the end of everything, of life itself.”
“Which it was, in a way.” Luc sounded very tired.
“No one knows why, but Cerise went into early labor,” Ouida continued. “ The rest of the twelve were practically glowing in the dark with power and magick and energy, but it didn’t have the same effect on Cerise. She went into labor and died in childbirth.”
I almost said, “But the child lived,” thinking of the pale, mewling baby washed clean by the rain.
“Maybe Melita knew it would happen,” Richard said. “Maybe not. But Cerise, her sister, died that night.”
“The eleven others who were left were horrified and scared of what had happened,” Sophie said.
“Melita was too dangerous.” Axelle examined her bloodred fingernails. “It wasn’t safe to have her around. So the eleven remaining witches lay in wait for her. They were going to kill her.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this, that this was a real story, real history. And I couldn’t believe the terrible conclusions my mind was leading me to. I glanced at Clio, who seemed as spellbound as I was.
“But it didn’t work,” Daedalus put in. “Melita was too strong even for the eleven together. She escaped and disappeared. No one ever saw her again.”
“Before she left, she went back to the Source and the great cypress tree, where she’d performed the rite.” Ouida took a deep breath, looking at her hands, folded in her lap. “She destroyed the tree, and the Source disappeared.”
“Fast-forward fifteen years,” said Manon. “By then it was obvious that the rite had had unexpected, lingering effects. None of the eleven was ever ill. Their magick was strong and clear and very, very powerful.”
“
Cerise’s daughter, born that night, grew normally,” Ouida said.“Oddly enough, she had the exact same birthmark that Cerise had had—a bright fleur-de-lis on her cheekbone. Somehow the magick that night had entered her as well, and her powers were unnaturally strong. Her name was Helène. In time she married and became with child. She died in childbirth, as her mother had. Her daughter Félice was marked with the fleur-de-lis.”
My own birthmark felt like it was burning against my skin.
“Félice grew to adulthood, married, and died in childbirth,” Daedalus said flatly. “It was like Cerise’s line was cursed because Cerise had died the night of the ritual.”
“And it continued that way,” Ouida said. “Cerise’s line never died out completely. Each successive generation produced one child. Your mother, Clémence, was the twelfth generation of Cerise’s line. You, my dears, are the thirteenth. In your line, the power is very strong. You two have the potential to be extremely powerful witches.”
“Especially if we put our powers together,” said Clio coolly.
Ouida frowned. “Well, I don’t know about that. I guess, in theory. I haven’t really heard of other identical twins being able to do that. Have you?” she asked Daedalus.
I worked hard to keep the shock off my face and to not look at Clio.
Daedalus looked thoughtful. “I can recall only two other sets of identical twins among our famille,” he said. “In the first pair, a twin died in childhood, before his rite of ascension. I don’t remember anything remarkable about the other set.”
“You must remember,” Jules pointed out, “that only the eleven that took part in Melita’s dark rite became, well, super-powerful. The rest of the community practiced Bonne Magie and were strong witches, but not supernaturally so. And of the eleven, you two are the first and only set of twins in any line.”
I tried to look calm and interested. This was completely the opposite of what Petra had told us. They were lying. They wanted us to feel safe as twins. They didn’t realize that we’d already figured out someone was trying to harm us.