The Final Days of Magic

by J. D. Horn

  “Yeah,” Lucy continued, “I know what you’re thinking, but Remy and I both knew what you and his mom were up to, making nice even though you’d both rather chew off your arms than see us together.”

  “I have nothing against Remy, but anyone could see you two would have a difficult path to tread, given that—”

  “My grandma murdered his. Yeah, I get it. I’m not stupid.” She looked away, the way she did when she felt ashamed. “I wasn’t sorry he did it. I was relieved.

  “I was only fifteen when I met him. Not gonna lie, it was the Shakespearean, forbidden-romance aspect of it that first attracted me to him. It didn’t seem like it would be long-term. Then you said we were staying, and I was kind of stuck in it. I wanted to want him. I wanted to love him even. But I didn’t.” She focused on Fleur. “A person can change a lot in two years.” She spoke as if conveying a nearly unfathomable truth.

  Fleur spared Lucy the condescension of adding “especially at your age” to Lucy’s thought. Instead, she nodded in agreement.

  “It doesn’t bother me he broke up with me. What bothers me is the way he looked at me. Like he was looking through me . . . and seeing something wrong.”

  Fleur blanched. “There is nothing wrong with you.”

  Lucy lifted her chin and looked down her nose at Fleur, the expression betraying her doubt. Had Lucy begun to sense something? Was it possible she had begun to realize her time on this earth had been borrowed—stolen—from another?

  “I’ve been thinking . . . ,” Lucy began, then fell silent, biting her lower lip, focusing on the paperweight as if it were a religious icon.

  “Yes?” Fleur prompted her, even as she knelt again before the dress, turning her attention back to the tulle.

  “I’m old enough to make up my own mind. About the wedding. I’m going, and I won’t be coming back to New Orleans.”

  Fleur froze. At first a surprised, wounded “oh” was all she could muster. She looked up at Lucy. “What do you mean, you aren’t coming back?”

  “I mean I’m staying in D.C.”

  Fleur’s face flushed hot. Lucy had conspired with her father, who had gone along with her plan because he was too weak to speak the truth, knowing it would fall on Fleur to act as the disciplinarian. The foolish coward. He knew it was impossible. He knew what Fleur was up against trying to keep their daughter alive. “Perhaps,” she allowed her fear to flame into a wounded anger, “we should call your father together and discuss this little plan you’ve been cooking up. He can clarify whether the party invitation includes an offer to stay on indefinitely. Trust me, he doesn’t want you horning in on his new life. At least not for long. And even if he does, I guarantee you young Meredith doesn’t.” Her words came out sharp. This, she thought, this is how Warren repays me for giving him his freedom without fanfare.

  “I don’t plan to ‘horn in’ on Dad, or either one of his fetuses,” Lucy said, crossing her arms and beginning to cry. “I spoke to Hailey last night.” This didn’t surprise Fleur. The two had been friends since preschool. If Lucy wanted to complain to someone about her terrible mother, Hailey would be the most likely choice. “To her parents, too. They said I could stay with them.” She brushed away her tears. “I don’t want to leave you, Mom, but I want to go home. I want to finish school with my friends.”

  Of course. Fleur realized how selfish she must appear to Lucy. Fleur had insisted on remaining here long past the point any reasonable woman would. She’d blamed her decision to stay on the pull of home, joked she was less intimidated by bloodthirsty bayou witches seeking revenge on Celestin’s kin than she was by the backbiting Potomac bitches waiting for her in what she and Lucy had come to call “the real world.” But for them, for both of them, New Orleans was “the real world” now, the only world where Fleur felt any confidence in her ability to keep her daughter alive.

  Lucy couldn’t learn the real reason they needed to remain in New Orleans. Fleur had felt the need to return to her source, sensing her magic would hold out the longest, remain the strongest, here in the city of her birth. Someday, long after Fleur had found a lasting solution, Lucy might learn everything Fleur did—everything—was for her. Until then, she might have to let her daughter hate her.

  “I want to go home. I need to go home. We haven’t been gone six months and already everyone’s forgotten me. They’re ghosting me. Not because they’re mad at me, but because I don’t exist.”

  Fleur understood. Her own D.C. friends had taken to returning her texts a day or two late, if at all. She hadn’t believed her world could move on so easily without her, but it had, almost like she’d never belonged in it.

  “I’m sorry, ma chère, but this”—she motioned around the oval room, though she meant to imply New Orleans—“is our home now.”

  “Maybe this is your home, but it never was mine. It never will be.” Fleur had realized all along Lucy was keeping one foot out the door, resisting making new connections other than to Remy. She’d hoped a sense of family would give Lucy enough gravity to keep her happy. “I’m an adult. Almost.”

  Fleur shook her head. “You are still a minor. Your father and I agreed. Your place is with me.” She felt a flash of inspiration. “I was planning to capitulate to your wish to attend your father’s wedding,” she lied, “but I can’t now. You will not be returning to D.C. At least not before your eighteenth birthday.” That tack could at most only buy Fleur seven months.

  “I know you’re angry with Daddy. Embarrassed about his affair. But you’re Fleur frigging Marin.” Fleur recognized the progression of Lucy’s campaign. A full-on frontal attack was failing, so she was moving on to stage two, flattery. “It’s been months now. You should rise like a phoenix from the Endicott ashes and carry us back to civilization on first class, if not private, wings. But instead you’re here building a nest out of paint strips and fabric swatches, getting ready to put a new face on the old Marin mausoleum. You deserve more than this.”

  “I said no.” She braced herself for the knife.

  “God. You can be such a bitch. No wonder Daddy started banging Meredith. No wonder Eli is hiding from you.” Lucy’s last-ditch effort—cruelty. “Your life might be over, but that doesn’t mean mine has to be.” There it was, the brilliant summation intended to knock the fight out of Fleur. It succeeded in bringing tears to her eyes, but Fleur was prepared to fight to her last breath for Lucy, even if that fight was with Lucy.

  She stood and took the paperweight from Lucy’s hand. “I realize you’re disappointed,” she said. “Angry with me. But I hope you know how much I do love you.”

  Lucy snorted at her words. “Right.”

  She began to search Lucy’s eyes, trying to gauge how long it would be before the storm passed. A couple of days, maybe a week? A chill began to tickle the base of her spine. Something was wrong.

  Lucy was there. With her. Walking. Talking. Breathing. But something, some vital spark was missing. The thing that had made her Lucy was gone. Her beloved Lucy was already dead.

  Fleur stumbled backward from shock and fell to the floor, dropping the paperweight. It bounced on the rug and rolled to a stop at Lucy’s feet.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said reflexively as she pushed herself up onto her elbows.

  Lucy didn’t respond. Instead, she bent over and picked up the paperweight. She came closer and dropped to her knees beside Fleur.

  “Your life might be over, but mine doesn’t have to be.”

  Fleur saw a bright streak as Lucy brought the heavy glass globe down on her forehead once, then again, then all fell to darkness.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Here?” Evangeline said, incredulity playing in her voice as she held out her hands and turned as if trying to take in the whole of the city and not just the festooned square around them. “New Orleans is where magic will be reborn?”

  “It will certainly die here.” Marceline shrugged. “But whether it will be reborn is yet to be decided. I can assure you New Orlean
s was molded from inception for this very purpose.”

  “Molded by whom?” Alice said. The “why” was obvious, the “how” no doubt arcane. The agency seemed the loosest thread to pull.

  “An excellent question,” Marceline said. The arch of her eyebrow and her conspiratorial tone caused Alice to abandon hope for a concise answer. “You will indulge me in a brief history lesson, yes?”

  Evangeline cast Alice a nervous glance. She seemed worried the reborn sorceress would push Alice to the limits of her patience—perhaps because she herself was losing patience.

  Alice gave Evangeline a nod to reassure her, then turned to Marceline and said, “Of course.” It might take Alice years to sort through the facts and fictions of Marceline’s story, but she could overlook a little dishonesty if it meant hearing the history of the city from a woman who’d lived most of it.

  Marceline’s face brightened with what struck Alice as true pleasure. The old witch, Alice realized, was lonely. This was her chance to reminisce.

  “One might,” Marceline said, diving into her ruminations, “look to de Pauger, the despotic little bureaucrat who drew up the plan of the Vieux Carré. Celui-là, il était un vrai zob.” She leaned in toward Alice, her smooth brow furrowing. “Do you know he pulled down a man’s house so he could superimpose his new grid system? When the poor fellow complained, de Pauger imprisoned him in darkness with shackles around his ankles. The man was nearly blind by the time he was released. But then again, de Pauger was a draftsman, not an artist, and all witches are, at least to a small degree, artists.

  “I believe we must move a bit farther afield—all the way back to France—if we are to discover the spider at the center of this web. The man after whom the city was named, le Duc d’Orléans, or as I like to think of him, ‘Philippe le Branleur.’ He was the regent of France between the death of Louis XIV and when Louis XV reached his maturity at the ripe old age of thirteen.”

  At the mention of the Bourbon kings, Alice’s mind flashed back to her first impression of the Dreaming Road—a facsimile of Versailles’s Galerie des Glaces. Had Alice’s interpretation of the Dreaming Road as Louis XIV’s famed Hall of Mirrors been a clue to the Dreaming Road’s origin, a marker of its DNA?

  “No,” Marceline continued to muse, “Philippe was not a mastermind. He was a tool.” She chuckled at her own choice of words, an accidental pun on the French “zob.”

  “But,” she held up a hand as if to fend off a protest, “a useful tool all the same, as he does bring us one step closer to Françoise Marie, le Branleur’s wife . . . and cousin.” She winked at Alice. “Even the branches of the Marin family tree aren’t nearly as twisted as those of the late French aristocracy.”

  Alice felt Evangeline tense by her side. She held out her hand to reassure her all was well.

  “She was a drunken hellcat, our Françoise.” Marceline carried on, seemingly oblivious to the fact her last quip could have indeed been her last. “Her sot of a husband made a habit of referring to her as ‘Madame Lucifer.’”

  It seemed that name was on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

  “A pleasing coincidence, as she was, in fact, the daughter of the Sun King.” Marceline paused as if giving Alice and Evangeline a chance to make the connection. Alice got the link immediately, the message of Art’s sermon feeling a tad too pertinent to Marceline’s history lesson for her comfort.

  “Sun King? Lucifer? No?” Marceline shrugged when neither reacted. “Françoise Marie’s mother,” she continued, “was Louis’s headmistress—no, that doesn’t sound right.” Her head tilted to the side. “Maîtresse-en-titre?”

  She posed the question to them both, but it was Alice who responded. “Official mistress.”

  “Yes. His official mistress, Madame de Montespan, who celebrated many a black mass with the sorceress known as ‘La Voisin,’ and the abbé Étienne Guibourg.” She nodded at Alice. “You might despise me, but in comparison to those three . . .” Her words drifted away as her eyes fell to the ground. “I have never harmed a child.” She looked back up, her brow furrowing and her eyes set in preparation to take on any challenge from them. Then her features softened in a flash, and she turned to face Evangeline. “Other than you, ma chère.”

  For the briefest moment, Alice felt Marceline stood on the verge of begging forgiveness, and Evangeline on the edge of granting it. But the silence held, the urgency in their eyes cooled, and the moment passed.

  Marceline coughed, pretending to clear her throat. “It’s rumored,” she continued, assuming a pedagogical air, “Guibourg introduced Madame de Montespan to The Lesser Key of Darkness, and through her hands the tome fell to her daughter. Telle mère, telle fille? Did the apple fall close to the tree? You be the judge. But the mother, de Montespan,” she drew out the name, “she is our Arachne, the nimble weaver at the center of the web. I have no proof to offer, but still I am sure.”

  Two clear and seemingly contradictory thoughts hit Alice at once. Marceline was a consummate liar, and Marceline was speaking the unbridled truth. “How,” Alice began, “can the city be used to restore magic?”

  “Through the Law of Correspondence. This city, at least the older parts of it, form a kind of effigy, if you will. Like the magical poupée—”

  “A Voodoo doll,” Evangeline said, turning, oddly, to Alice rather than her aunt for confirmation.

  “Yes,” Marceline responded, “and no. Regardless of what the movies show us, they don’t use dolls in Voodoo, at least not to harm. The magic of the effigy belongs to European witches, as taught to us in the old forests by the Dark Man Himself.”

  It struck Alice that the wicker man Nicholas was so intent on torching during the Longest Night celebration, too, was an effigy—a representation of the dying solar god, a stand-in for the King of Bones and Ashes. She began to wonder if Nicholas was acting of his own accord, as he believed, or as another’s puppet.

  “This city,” Marceline said, doing a slow turn, “is like one of those dolls in the sense that any magic enacted on it will affect the corresponding target, or targets, it was created to symbolize.”

  “Targets?”

  “The seven Gates of Guinee. Papa Legba is the first to be approached. This park and its immediate environs, they were laid out along the lines of his vèvè. Through Legba, one arrives at the seven gates—the seven wounds—guarded by Baron Samedi and his assistants. This area, Legba’s vèvè, lies within a greater design—one that corresponds to the Baron’s vèvè. Seven of the second symbol’s stars equate to the Gates of Guinee.”

  “But that’s just nonsense they shell out for tourists,” Evangeline said. Again, she turned to Alice, her expression incredulous. “It’s rumored you can find the locations of the gates by aligning the center of Samedi’s vèvè with Canal Street. The first is in the oldest cemetery.”

  “What is New Orleans’s oldest cemetery?”

  “St. Louis Number One. Everyone knows that.” Evangeline responded as if her aunt had asked her to calculate two plus two.

  “Ah,” Marceline said, “but what ‘everyone knows’ to be true is more often than not patently false. St. Louis Cemetery was the work of the Spanish. There was an earlier French burial ground. The St. Peter Street Cemetery.” Marceline motioned with both hands to either side of the cathedral. “Baron Samedi’s vèvè links the heart of New Orleans Voodoo, Congo Square, to the heart of the Catholic faith, the cathedral.” She turned back to them. “There are no dichotomies. Only polarities.”

  Alice knew Voodoo had been a part of New Orleans’s culture from its earliest days, but decades had passed between the founding of the city and the rise of the Voodoo queens. “But,” she said, raising her hand to shield her eyes as she turned a full circle, “none of this makes sense.” She stopped as she again faced the statue. She jabbed a finger at Jackson. “That has only been here since around 1850 or so. And most of the Quarter has burned twice since New Orleans was founded. Still, you’re alleging adherents to the religion of Voodo
o plotted this city?”

  “I’m saying no such thing.” She sounded almost offended. “It wasn’t the acolytes of Voodoo, but those who wished to attack the forces represented by their loa. Us,” she said, pounding her fist against her chest, “the witches of New Orleans. We designed this city.”

  “But why would you . . . would we . . . want to take on those forces?”

  “Just as your Dreaming Road lies between dreaming and death, the world of spirits is like a film separating the reality we know as ‘the common world’ from the realm of infinite possibility. From magic. It seeps into our world through the seven wounds.”

  “And witches want to reopen the wounds.”

  Marceline nodded. “They aren’t separate entities, the Dark Man and Legba. They are two polarities of the same force—the one tears rifts into the fabric of our reality, the other mends them. It is our Dark Man who siphons the madness that is magic from the realm of pure potential, and their Legba who regulates its flow through the realm of spirit into the common world.

  “The story of Inanna and Damuzi, the Queen of Heaven and the King of Bones and Ashes, tells us how to renew these wounds, through love or betrayal, though love creates the deepest, longest-lasting wounds. Our world has seen more than one Queen, and myriad Kings. But your Luc can be the last sacrifice, the greatest King. He’s waiting now for the both of you, a mere hairsbreadth beyond the seven gates. With your help, he can return to this world. Together you can conquer the force that is strangling the flow of magic—conquer it for all time.”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said, her rational mind refusing to accept she might have been born into a living myth.

  “Then the layout of this city, the attraction between your family and The Lesser Key, perhaps it is all a matter of coincidence?” Marceline’s lips pulled down into a frown as her eyebrows rose. She was, it appeared, incredulous at Alice’s resistance. “Yes, one could argue that viewpoint. Even as one can insist it’s mere coincidence the speed of light as it passes through a vacuum is echoed by the latitude of the Great Pyramid of Giza, or on that selfsame latitude a little girl named Alice once noticed a ray of light coming from her tatie Fleur’s rhinestone shoe buckle.”