by J. D. Horn
He grasped her left hand but didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. She felt the seven cuts she’d carved into her own flesh each take on a separate pulse.
EIGHT
Their café was on the edge of the Marigny, but still well within earshot of the bells of St. Louis Cathedral. Alice grasped the handle of the eatery’s door just as the bells began to peal nine.
Most mornings Nathalie beat Alice there, and Alice would arrive to find her nursing a mug of steaming black coffee and entertaining herself by building pyramids out of sugar packets. Nathalie would always look up, beaming at her the second she came through the door. They sat at the same table every time.
Nathalie was late today, or at least later than usual.
Of course, they’d fallen into this easy pattern without ever deliberately pinning down specifics of time, or even place, so technically neither of them could be late.
The waitress—her name tag read “Sue,” though Alice sensed it wasn’t her real name, that there was a past from which she was hiding—nodded her greeting and reached for a mug. She was anticipating the decaffeinated green tea Alice drank every morning, a justification, or perhaps a preemptive act of penance, for the chocolate chip pancakes that had become her regular order.
Nathalie always grimaced at her tea.
Nathalie never felt the need to justify anything she enjoyed; Nathalie simply enjoyed.
Alice took a seat at the table—their table—and began pulling the weeds of suspicion Nicholas had sowed in her mind. Alice grabbed the largest by its roots first. She couldn’t bring herself to conceive of the Boudreau brothers, Lincoln and Wiley, as executioners, but then again—the part of her that always insisted on playing devil’s advocate challenged—she couldn’t bring herself to think of Fleur as a necromancer even though this she knew to be true.
Alice had come to trust Nathalie implicitly, in part due to their shared experience as outsiders. While she liked the Boudreau brothers, she knew she could never completely trust anyone who’d grown up feeling as if they belonged. If there were even an inkling of truth to what Nicholas had said about Lincoln and Wiley, and Nathalie caught a whiff of it, she would come directly to her. Of that much Alice was certain. But could it be possible that Lincoln and Wiley were using their cousin as an unwitting accomplice in slipping the noose around Fleur’s neck? It was all too ridiculous, and Alice felt a flash of anger at herself for letting Nicholas get to her.
Alice heard the door open and she looked up, disappointed when an old man stumbled in, the reek of stale sweat and fresh whisky crossing the threshold with him. His patchy hair made Alice think of a monk’s tonsure, with a shiny bald patch on top and an unkempt, finger-in-the-light-socket white fringe wrapping around his temples. He wore a soiled brown jacket with tan stripes that looked like cold leftovers from a moth’s buffet.
The man pushed deeper into the café and took a seat one table over from Alice, putting himself between her and the door. He jabbed his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a fistful of coins. He let them rain—silver, nickel, and copper, some too large or too small to be American currency—onto the tabletop, then reached into the other pocket and extracted a few wadded-up bills.
Alice had never seen the man here before, but “Sue” seemed to be familiar with him. She dropped off Alice’s mug of green tea, then crossed to his table and fingered through the coins, pulling some closer, pushing others back to her patron. She picked up the crumpled paper and unfolded the three bills, smoothing each of them out by running it back and forth over the edge of the table, then scooped up the acceptable currency and left the table, returning only a few moments later with a plate of eggs, bacon, and hash browns. “Back in a second with your biscuit, Bill,” she said. “You want coffee?” This Bill fellow responded with a shake of his head.
It was rude to stare at the unfortunate man, so Alice focused instead on the door, keeping an eye out for Nathalie’s arrival. Then she realized she was staring past the presumed vagrant if not at him, which might seem the same from his perspective. She lowered her eyes and grasped her mug between both hands, sliding it closer to her. She studied her image mirrored in the liquid until she saw through herself, then stopped seeing herself altogether. For one brief, disconcerting moment she had the sensation of fading away.
She jolted and looked back up to find the old man watching her, smiling. He nodded as if in agreement, though she had no idea with what.
It dawned on her that he seemed to recognize her even though his features were unfamiliar to her. She sensed no magic from him, but perhaps he’d once been a witch. He appeared to be around Celestin’s age and may have been a former associate, or possibly an enemy. Of course, the answer could be simpler. She may have passed by the man as he sat on a corner asking for handouts. She always made a point to drop something into an upturned palm, though she reckoned now this constituted less an act of true charity than an attempt to salve her conscience. If she really cared, she’d remember if she’d placed coin or bill in this man’s outstretched hand. She made a resolution to pay more attention going forward.
The door opened again, and her eyes darted to it. But it wasn’t Nathalie, only a thick, bearded guy in a tank top. Alice had to hand it to the guy. Even in late December, he seemed committed to showing off the tattoos that ran from his shoulders down to his wrists. Seemingly oblivious to her gaze, he turned to make his way toward the padded bench that ran the length of the far wall.
Alice’s phone vibrated, sliding a bit on the smooth tabletop as it did. She reached out to grasp it, her shoulders relaxing as she read Nathalie’s name on the screen. She realized she was smiling. “I’m about to start without you,” Alice said with mock impatience.
“Oh, gosh. I am so sorry,” Nathalie said, sounding as if she had taken Alice’s tone seriously. “I was hoping I could catch you before you left your place. I’m not gonna be able to make it today,” she said, sounding more excited than sorry. “Something just happened. Something amazing, really. I’m on my way up to Natchitoches.”
As Nathalie spoke, Alice’s eyes drifted back to the old man. He sat there in silence, knife in one hand, fork in the other, his face turned slightly down as he focused on the plate before him. Still, Alice could see his lips moving, as if in a tardy and silent blessing, and for the briefest of moments Alice had the impression that they moved in sync with Nathalie’s words, almost as if he were speaking the words himself.
“Oh,” Alice said, shaking off the illusion and reaching deep into herself to try to match Nathalie’s enthusiasm, or at least hide her own disappointment. “What is it? What happened?”
“The Boudreaus contacted me.”
Alice had a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“My family,” Nathalie continued, her pleasure at saying the words palpable.
Alice understood Nathalie’s hunger for a sense of connection to them, but the timing . . .
“They asked me up for a visit. Just a short one,” Nathalie said, sounding defensive, or like she was grappling with her own disappointment that the Boudreaus had set a definite limit on her welcome. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“A holiday gathering?” Alice said, doing her best to keep her voice light.
“Nah,” Nathalie said, then added, “well, maybe. I don’t know. There might be a bit of that, too.” She sounded less than pleased at the prospect. “But they got some kind of big meeting going on tonight, and they want me . . .” It touched Alice’s heart to hear Nathalie’s voice break. “They want me to come up and join them. They called me up, out of the blue. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about it, but I knew you’d wonder where I’d disappeared to. At least I hoped you would.” Alice was teetering between inquiring into the Boudreaus’ wish to keep the meeting clandestine and reassuring Nathalie that she would feel lost without her, when Nathalie spoke again, her tone going flat. “Listen,” she said, “I know it’s stupid of me to get my hopes up. They’ve never given a damn about me before, but—�
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“I’m sure,” Alice cut her off, deciding not to risk Nathalie’s fragile joy by giving voice to Nicholas’s suspicions—at least for the present, “Lincoln and Wiley have let them know what a wonderful person you are. That they’ve been missing out.”
“I don’t know about that . . . ,” Nathalie responded, sounding happy and a little embarrassed at the same time. Alice could almost hear her blushing.
“I’m quite sure of it,” Alice said.
“Sorry,” Nathalie said. “Didn’t catch that. I’ll call you back in a bit. I think I’m heading into a dead—”
The sound of a chair scraping on the floor drowned out Nathalie’s words. The old man pushed up from his table and, stumbling a bit, turned toward the door.
“Hurry back,” Alice said, then realized Nathalie was gone.
NINE
Fleur could barely breathe. For five years, Nicholas had helped maintain the spell that kept Lucy alive by skimming a bit of power from the Chanticleer Coven’s every working. He always spoke of their “little arrangement” with an air of magnanimity, but he spoke of it often. Mostly offhand comments which were laden with a clear import: what he so generously gave, he could snap away at will.
But this summer everything had changed. Nicholas had lost control of the moribund coven the same day their father slaughtered most of its remaining members. Of course, Nicholas hadn’t known of the massacre when he’d gone on his off-the-grid walkabout. He had fallen to the one-two punch of his dethronement and being dumped by Evangeline Caissy. The region’s surviving witches thought Nicholas had taken off to lick his wounds, or to hide his shame, perhaps even to the Dreaming Road.
Of course, Nicholas had played the role of the great martyr, using Lucy’s need as a cover for his flight and Fleur as the sole witness to his altruism. Fleur was happy to play along. She didn’t give a damn, as long as Lucy might benefit from his absence.
Did Nicholas’s return signify success or surrender?
“Good to see you, son,” Nicholas said, his gaze fixing not on her, but on Hugo.
Fleur held back, hoping absence might have made Hugo’s heart grow fonder toward her brother—despite everything, Nicholas was his father—but Hugo only shrugged. “Then you’ll love how I look from the leaving side,” he said, studiously avoiding his gaze. Without another word, he passed by his father and exited the room. Fleur heard Hugo make a gruff, unintelligible comment in response to Lucy’s muffled voice. The front door slammed.
Nicholas regarded her with a veneer of amusement, one eyebrow raised as he shook his head and chuckled, but his mirth was only for show. She knew her brother, probably better than anyone else left on this earth. He’d been hoping, if not for a rapprochement with his son, at least for a cessation of hostilities. Perhaps there was a certain level of paternal affection involved, though Fleur suspected it came in second to Nicholas’s need to be admired. Revered.
Nicholas seemed to realize she was peeking behind his casual facade; he turned away and crossed to the eighteenth-century table à quadrille brisé on which their female ancestors once played now nearly forgotten card games such as brusquembille and aluette, the cards of the latter capable of doubling as a tarot deck. Fleur had taken the table over as a design space. She’d covered its surface with sketches and cloth swatches and paint chips for the renovation she intended to make on the manse.
He knew the jitters were about to cause her to climb out of her own skin, but still he gazed at her as unblinking and unmoved as the Sphinx. He was toying with her, making her wait like a dog with a treat balanced on its muzzle. She could almost hear him commanding, “Wait for it.”
She couldn’t stand it another moment. He’d won this staring match. “Have you . . . ?” Fleur was on the verge of asking him if he’d found the magical solution for which he’d been searching, but he held up a cautioning hand.
“Wow,” Lucy said, sweeping into the room. “What crawled up Hugo’s . . .” She stopped as she noticed Nicholas. “Oh.” For a moment Fleur’s voluble daughter was struck dumb. But only for a moment. “This close to Christmas, I was hoping for a visit from the jolly Saint Nick, but I guess we’ll have to make do with you. Greetings, Uncle.” She cupped a hand to the side of her face, shielding her mouth from Nicholas. “He is,” she began in a stage whisper, “still my uncle, right? Not my stepbrother twice removed or anything?”
Nicholas shot Fleur a pained smile. “Yes, Lutine,” he said, using his favorite nickname for Lucy, “I am still your uncle.”
Fleur was both pleased and somewhat surprised to sense Nicholas felt an honest affection for his niece. With Lucy’s father a thousand miles away on the map and a million miles away in terms of an emotional connection, Lucy could benefit from a solid relationship with her uncle. Fleur felt a tinge of sadness as she realized how much better Vincent had been suited to playing an avuncular role in Lucy’s life.
“Thinking of redoing the old pile?” Nicholas began examining the sketches, lifting them one by one and holding them up to the natural light that filtered through the window.
“More than thinking. Please don’t interfere. Tu m’écoutes, Nicho?” She punctuated her plea with a long-abandoned childhood nickname, an appeal to any small spark of affection that might still glow in his heart.
He answered with a nod and returned the sketches to the table. “You’ll need to deal with the foundation before tackling”—he waved his hand over the designs—“the cosmetics. There are some substantial cracks.” Nicholas wanted to believe he was so very different from their father, but Fleur could see he still regarded her, as Celestin had, as la belle bécasse, pretty but empty-headed.
“The contractor will be starting after the New Year,” Fleur said. “The gentleman who took over Vincent’s business,” she added to lay the blame where it belonged—squarely at Nicholas’s feet. Due to an inheritance scheme set up almost two centuries earlier, ownership of the house fell to the eldest son in each generation. Vincent would have shored the foundation up long ago if Nicholas had let him, but their elder brother had never made a secret of his loathing for the family’s historical home. Nicholas had even castigated a stunned Vincent for making necessary repairs after Katrina. After that, he’d refused to allow any upkeep on the structure. Left unloved for more than a decade, it counted as a wonder that the house had fared as well as it did in the New Orleans climate.
“I leave it in your capable hands, then,” he said, though his emphasis on the word “capable” telegraphed that he considered her anything but. He was leaving the restoration to her partially because he thought she’d find herself in over her head. “But you must realize, you’re only buying time. It’s more than the foundation of the house crumbling; it’s the land beneath it.”
“Um,” Lucy began. Fleur could tell from her daughter’s wrinkled brow that she was spooked. “Is it safe to stay here, or are we going all House of Usher?”
“We are,” Fleur said, with a challenging side-glance at her brother, “as safe here as anywhere else in southern Louisiana. The Mississippi River is alluvial. The sediment it carries would, if nature were allowed her way, build shifting banks and determine the path of the river’s flow. When they fixed the river’s course, the engineers created a situation where the water table beneath New Orleans started falling, taking the land lower with it. Unintended consequences are sometimes poetic.” She allowed herself one small warning jab at her brother: “The very thing that makes it possible to prevent the land from flooding is causing the land to crumble beneath us.”
“You are so not making me feel better . . .”
“And on the other end,” Nicholas added, “the Atchafalaya is silting up. The next big flood may change the river’s course anyway and wipe out a couple of towns along the way as it does.”
Fleur could see a spark rise to Lucy’s eyes. “Kind of like what Alice has been saying about magic.”
“You’ve been speaking to Alice . . . about magic?” Fleur had been encouraging
Lucy to spend time with her cousin, but she’d assumed Lucy would encourage Alice to develop a healthy respect for consumerism, not that Alice would enlighten Lucy about the occult, perhaps more than was safe. Her daughter had an uncanny ability to pick up on subtle clues, at least when she wasn’t practicing a willing obliviousness.
“Is that so unexpected? She knows things. And it isn’t like we have oodles of other interests in common.”
“It’s good you are, it’s only . . . Well, never mind. What did Alice tell you?”
“That magic is meant to be wild and untamed. That it’s something you can tap into, but never control. At least not forever. Maybe magic isn’t dying. Maybe its course is silting up.”
Nicholas regarded his niece with surprise, as if he’d encountered a donkey quoting Shakespeare.
“What?” Lucy said, picking up on his incredulity.
“Nothing,” he said, coming alert, a spark of pride rising to his eyes. “Nothing at all. It’s only I’m happy to see you taking an interest . . . at long last.” Behind her daughter’s back, Fleur arched her eyebrows at him and gave a quick shake of her head. As Lucy turned toward her, she managed to cover the expression by brushing back her bangs.
“Perhaps I would have a long time ago if I were really a part of the family,” Lucy began. “Well, you know what I mean. If I were like the rest of you.”
“You are a part of this family,” Nicholas said, “though at times it seems you’re the only one who wants to be.” His lips curled up into something that resembled a conciliatory smile. “Listen,” he said, shifting his focus back to Fleur. “I wanted to stop by and let you know in person that I’m back. We have a lot to talk about, but at the moment I’m a bit pressed. You see, I have an event I’d like your help with, and the clock is ticking.”