by J. D. Horn
This was not a request; it was a command.
“What kind of event?” Fleur could feel herself beginning the smooth shift into the guise of politician’s wife. She’d been groomed, if not born, to stand at the side of a powerful man doing his best to win over other powerful men.
“I’m hoping you’ll join me—well, actually I’m hoping all of the region’s remaining witches will join me—in reviving a lapsed tradition.” His face brightened as he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved what appeared to be a bit of glossy card stock. He gave it a quick glance, then held it out to her. She took it, expecting an invitation, but instead she found herself holding an old Polaroid photograph from the late seventies of the three Marin children—Nicholas, Vincent, and herself—in costume.
“Oh, Nicholas,” Fleur said, her own delight surprising her. “The Longest Night?” She stared down at the picture, trying to make a connection between the girl dressed as a tiny Morgan le Fay and herself. With Nicholas, it came with greater ease. He was older than she, and in the photo had already begun to display many of the traits he was to carry into adulthood. Young Nicholas’s costume consisted of a red bodysuit with a pointed tail, a headband with horns, and a black trident. His hand rested on her shoulder. Vincent stood beside them, though at more of a distance, as if he, like Lucy, felt he wasn’t really a part of the magic. He was dressed in a black suit and held a leather-bound journal in one hand and an oversize quill in the other. Fleur didn’t remember seeing him in the costume, but she recognized it as the Dark Man with his book of damned souls.
Lucy crept up beside her and took Fleur’s hand. “Cute,” she said, taking the photograph from her. “Halloween?”
“Not Halloween,” Fleur said, “but close. It’s witches’ Halloween. The real one, the winter solstice. It’s the longest night of the year, hence ‘the Longest Night.’” She looked up at Nicholas and added, “Tomorrow night.”
“Non-witches used to bar their shutters from dusk till dawn,” he said. “Of course, the night became watered down over the ages until it lost its significance.”
“Like Halloween,” Lucy said. “The other real one.”
“We used to call it ‘la Defilé des Maléfiques,’” Nicholas continued, ignoring Lucy’s quip, “because it’s the night where we embrace the image of evil projected onto us.”
“My, how terribly liberating.”
“No.” Fleur fought against her daughter’s propensity to make snap, final judgments. “I know it may sound silly, but it truly is a marvelous sight. Une procession aux flambeaux—a torchlit procession.”
“Once we used actual torches,” Nicholas added, at the worst possible moment if he wanted to convince Lucy the event could have any cool factor, “though as far back as I can remember it’s been a few candles mixed in with flashlights. Safer for everyone, considering the shaky grips and unsteady walks of some of our fellows.”
“The Longest Night,” Fleur offered, “always used to bring the covens together.”
“That is precisely my goal.” His look seemed to telegraph a thought to Fleur. Her heart leaped as she realized this somehow fit into a plan to help Lucy. A devil’s grin flashed on his lips in the moment before his face smoothed into the mask of a beatific angel. “I hope to bring those of us left together. Build a new coven out of the ashes.”
Fleur doubted her brother would get much further than she had, but for all Nicholas’s faults, he was an excellent leader. If anyone could find a way to resurrect a sense of commonality in the fractured community, it was her brother. Even so, his efforts seemed to be too little, too late. The witching community had been teetering along the line between moribund and extinct even before the slaughter. Most of the witches left had been too old or antisocial to attend Celestin’s memorial ball.
“Our elders will appreciate the nostalgia of the event,” Nicholas said, as if he could glean her thoughts at will. “Especially the burning of a wicker man. And our friends who prefer a solitary path will, I hope, enjoy the anonymity of the event, as well as their ability to slip away once they’ve had their fill of human interaction.”
“You certainly have my support,” Fleur said. A look of amusement rose to his eyes. He found it funny she spoke as if she had a choice.
“Then perhaps you and Eli will do the honor of lighting the effigy.”
Fleur felt her mouth go dry. “Eli has been out of reach for a while now. At least for me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. He’d mooned over you for so long, I’d assumed that given a second chance—”
“Listen, Mom . . .” Lucy jumped in, Fleur felt sure, to rescue her, then paused as if to regroup. “Don’t get me wrong. Love the idea of parental-condoned mischief. Love”—she lingered on the word—“it. But about this Longest Night thing . . .” Lucy’s words drifted off, and she cast a coy glance at the floor. The combination signaled her lack of interest in the affair.
“Yes, what about it?”
“The Marins, we’re not exactly well-loved since your dad kind of, well, massacred a lot of people. And by ‘a lot,’ I mean ‘a lot.’”
“No, ma lutine, we are not.”
“Maybe we should pass on this parade or whatever it is . . .”
“It is a procession,” Fleur corrected Lucy, “not a parade.”
“And the oh so significant difference would be?”
“A parade,” Nicholas began, “is for the spectators’ entertainment. A procession is for the edification of its participants.”
“Okay, sure.” Lucy gave Nicholas her signature eye roll. “I am always up for edification, but maybe there’s a way more fun and far less opportunity-for-revengy option to pull the old gang back together?”
“You don’t have to worry about your safety.” Nicholas cast a glance toward the hidden passageway. “Celestin has paid the price. The others’ acceptance of his body for use as relics has paid for our pardon.”
“Ugh. I don’t want to think about it. Bits and pieces of Celestin—”
“Changing hands like currency. And currency is what his body has become.”
“But he can’t feel anything, right?” She focused on Fleur. “You like exorcised his head, right, so he’s . . . well, whatever, so he isn’t . . .”
“Yes, Lucy. We’ve discussed this.” Fleur fixed Nicholas with a perhaps too-innocent gaze.
“I still don’t know how Alice—”
“Don’t judge her, dear.” Fleur hoped to put Lucy off the subject. Parental judgment usually drove her to change topics or to storm off. Right now, Fleur would settle for either.
“I’m not judging her. Not really. Not much. I mean, part of me is in awe of her, and part of me is terrified. But all the same. I know this Longest Night fun run is like a holiday tradition—”
“Oh, it’s more than a tradition,” Nicholas said. “It’s a sacred duty.”
“A sacred duty we’ve never participated in.”
“A sacred duty you’ve never participated in. I’ve walked the path many times.”
“I’m guessing like maybe twice since 1982, though, right?”
“We haven’t celebrated Longest Night since . . .” Fleur tried to pinpoint a year. “Well, I can’t really remember. Since we were children.” She looked to Nicholas for confirmation.
Lucy folded her arms across her chest and glared at Fleur. “I rest my case.”
“So, I’ve lapsed,” Fleur said, returning her daughter’s deadpan expression. “I’m home now, and ready to return to the fold. After all, the Chanticleer Coven used to lead the procession, and we Marins—”
“Yeah, yeah. We led the Chanticleers. Okay, but burning a wicker man? It’s like some kind of lame outsider art.”
“It’s a leftover practice from the old days,” Fleur said. “Lore has it when magic was stronger and reality more pliable, witches would turn themselves into will-o’-the-wisps on the Longest Night. We’d lead a wayfarer astray and burn him as a sacrifice to take the place of the fallen sun god in
the underworld.”
“Charming.”
“A Longest Night celebration is more than a bit of local color, you know,” Nicholas explained. “It was once worldwide. Witches everywhere would venture out, doing their part to return the light to the earth.”
“Checking in to make sure we’re clear on a point—you both understand this is all metaphor, right? The world is going to wobble back up whether or not a bunch of senile old sorcerers teeter along the river carrying an open flame.”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “Are you so sure of that?” he said. “Many once considered witches’ duty, their only duty, to be the bringers of light. Your grandmother Laure’s side of the family had the tradition of naming the firstborn boy and girl of each generation a variant of Luc or Lucille because of it.”
“Oh, I thought there was some dusty old ancestor lingering on the edge of soon-to-be-forgotten history.”
“Well, legend has it there once was.” Nicholas’s mischievous grin resurrected itself. “He, too, was a rebel. Like you.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, more like Luc.”
Nicholas rocked back, genuinely stricken.
Her face froze. “I’m sorry. I so did not mean to go there. My mouth was in motion, and my brain couldn’t shut it down in time.”
It took Nicholas a beat to recover. “It’s all right. Luc was our . . . Phaëthon,” he said, opting to substitute Apollo’s ill-fated son for his better-known and far more Catholic counterpart. “Come on. Frankly, this may be the last year the procession ever takes place. Anywhere.”
“You’ll enjoy it,” Fleur coaxed her daughter. “It will speak to your taste for the dramatic. The site of the bonfire at the end is even called ‘the End of the World.’ I’d like to share the tradition with you. Please? For me?”
“Ugh,” Lucy said with mock exasperation, “save the maternal guilt. I’ll go.”
Nicholas applauded, then folded his hands and bowed to them. He drew near and kissed Fleur’s cheek. “Wear your flats, ladies,” he said as he exited the room. “We’ll be walking a distance and crossing over train tracks.”
“Hmmm,” Lucy said, turning to Fleur. “Tell you what. I’m in a generous mood, so I’ll let you off with new Louboutin sneakers.”
She shrugged. “Deal.”
A young man appeared in the doorway. “Excuse me, ladies. The gentleman told me I could come through.” In the crook of his left arm he carried an enormous and extravagant bouquet of probably three dozen roses. In his right hand was a small, square cardboard box.
“Someone must be feeling guilty,” he said, meaning it as a joke.
“See,” Lucy said, advancing on the poor man as if she were a tiger stalking prey, “I told you Eli would come crawling back.” She snatched the card from the large bouquet and tugged the message from its envelope. “Oh,” she said, her face falling. “They’re from Dad.” A sharper shade of disappointment slid across her face. “They’re for me.” She let the card drop to the floor and left the room.
“Oh, geez,” the delivery man said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t really think—”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry. You couldn’t have known.” Fleur circled around to her worktable, then dug beneath some samples for her wallet. She found a twenty and crossed to the delivery man. He was still struggling under the weight of the large bouquet. “Oh, I apologize,” she said, still trying to look pleased by the delivery. “Please, put those down anywhere you can find a space.”
The man’s face telegraphed relief, and he set the larger part of the burden down on a side table. “I think,” he said, proffering the box he still held, “this one is for you.”
Fleur accepted the box, handing over the tip in exchange. “Thank you for bringing these. I’m sure the holiday season is very busy for you.”
“It’s my job,” he said with a shrug.
Fleur nodded. “Do let me show you out.”
“That’s okay, ma’am. I can find my way.” He went to the door, then turned back. “You have a nice Christmas, okay?” he said.
“You, too,” Fleur responded, surprised to find a sincere smile rising to her lips. She waited, listening intently for the sound of the door closing behind him. Only then did she dare read the message accompanying the box. It read, “A bit of magic of my own, for the rarest of flowers. W.” She opened the lid of the box. Inside lay a single camellia flower, a Middlemist’s Red, exceptionally rare in any season, in December a near impossibility. An outwardly loving gesture which, in fact, underscored that Warren was now wealthy and influential enough to no longer need the Marins.
This was the bastard’s way of announcing the divorce was final. The doorbell rang again. This delivery would be the settlement papers. At least Fleur wouldn’t have to tip.
TEN
Evangeline turned her face away as Lincoln leaned in to kiss her goodbye.
The Boudreaus had summoned him and Wiley up to Natchitoches to attend an impromptu family meeting, or—given the secrecy that seemed to overhang it—cabal.
Evangeline focused on Sugar, curled up and sleeping on Lincoln’s sweatshirt, which Evangeline had shed like a skin and dropped onto the sofa. When she’d pulled the shirt on that morning, its gray fleece and Lincoln’s scent had comforted her. Walking home, she’d felt suffocated, and she had begun tugging it over her head even as she crossed the threshold. She’d gone into the bedroom to dig out the ancient white T-shirt she liked to wear when nothing else seemed to fit, then returned to find Lincoln staring down at his phone. The summons had come by text, which didn’t mesh well with the rustic image Evangeline’s imagination had conjured of the Boudreau clan.
Lincoln’s lips brushed her cheek. “If I had a choice,” he said softly in her ear, “I wouldn’t go.”
He had a choice. There was always a choice. But she didn’t challenge him. She’d lost any right to challenge him. The confrontation with Reverend Bill should have wiped away all thought of Luc Marin, but instead something about the look in the old man’s eyes had sharpened the edges of her dream. The sense of Luc insinuated itself a bit deeper into Evangeline’s awareness with each passing hour, sticking there, sharp and irritating like burr grass on a tube sock.
“You’re mad at me.”
She tried to convince herself it was true. He and Wiley were leaving her short at the club, after all, and Lincoln claimed he “couldn’t” tell her what the family meeting was about. But she hadn’t turned away in anger; she’d turned her face because of the irrational fear that—even though she’d only dreamed it—Lincoln might taste Luc Marin’s kiss lingering on her lips.
Another pang of guilt. Now, that made her angry.
She shouldn’t feel guilty for thinking of Luc, for dreaming of him, for wishing his life hadn’t been cut short. Luc had been her first love. Still, Evangeline didn’t dare look at Lincoln straight on, afraid he’d realize she was looking through him and at the memory of a man dead going on a decade.
“I’m not angry,” she said, but she pulled back when he tried to kiss her again. He reached out and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning her face to him.
Irritation rippled across his features, then melted away into hurt. He nodded and sighed. “I’ll be back by dinnertime tomorrow,” he said, releasing her.
When she didn’t respond, he started to turn away. “Wait,” she said, and reached up to run her fingers through his thick mass of blond cowlicks. She came so close to a confession, but the words got caught in her throat. If she told him he was competing with a dead boyfriend, she doubted he’d take it well. Men were men. His pride would build a wall between them.
She needed to sort her emotions out on her own before involving him in them.
“Drive careful,” she said, and lay her other hand on his chest, a sign of affection and a barrier between them.
Evangeline fastened the shutters and locked her Creole cottage’s twin front doors. She pushed the living room furniture against the walls and rolled up
the area rug, then lit a single white jar candle, her breath still coming heavy from the exertion.
She scooped up a protesting Sugar and deposited her in the bedroom, closing the door. The cat hissed, hurling a barrage of expletive images that challenged Evangeline’s intelligence, sanity, and scruples equally and at the same time. Sugar couldn’t possibly comprehend what Evangeline was doing. Evangeline herself didn’t understand; she was acting on instinct.
She stopped as she passed through her kitchen and dug in the junk drawer until she turned up a piece of chalk abandoned by the young daughter of one of her former dancers. The girl had spent an afternoon with Evangeline once while her mother sorted out some legal or medical difficulty. Evangeline couldn’t remember which. Astonishing as it seemed, the little girl she remembered was probably in high school now.
Evangeline returned to the living room and knelt in the center of the floor, sketching out, as best she could manage freehand, an old-school pentagram. Only then did she allow herself to acknowledge what she was doing.
She pushed back from the pentagram and sat with her back against the wall, resting.
Sugar launched a fresh volley of recriminations from behind the closed bedroom door. Evangeline blocked out the barbed images framed as dire warnings and pulled her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She closed her eyes and endeavored to reconstruct a memory she’d long tried to erase—her last conversation—all right, quarrel—with Luc.
It had taken place in the small upper-floor apartment on Barracks Street she and Luc had shared after Katrina. He had become obsessed with wresting control of the Chanticleer Coven from Nicholas, and Celestin had encouraged his rebellion at every step. Evangeline could have easily defeated any flesh-and-blood challenge to her relationship with Luc, but she didn’t stand a chance against the mania his grandfather was fanning into flame.
It was absurd. A ridiculous and wasteful gesture. Even then it had been clear that the once powerful band of witches had fallen into a decline for which there was no hope of reversal. But for Luc, controlling the coven had never been about power. It had been about proving something to Nicholas. About punishing him for driving his mother, Astrid, away.