The Final Days of Magic

by J. D. Horn

  Nathalie couldn’t join the pieces together. Flowers and candles and Katie speaking to the camera, her manner animated yet reverent.

  “She was my friend,” a woman with eighty-six-proof breath said into Nathalie’s ear, causing her to startle.

  “I’m sorry?” Nathalie said, asking for clarification.

  The woman seemed to misunderstand. “Thank you,” she said, then tipped a bottle to her lips with one hand, grasping Nathalie’s forearm with the other.

  “I mean, who?” Nathalie said, removing the woman’s hand.

  The woman’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Well, Vangie, of course. I used to dance there, but we were more than employer-employee, if you know what I mean. We were like . . .” She held up her hand and managed to fumble twisting her middle finger around her index. “Ah, hell,” she said, discouraged by her own lack of coordination. “Vangie was my girl.”

  “You mean Evangeline?”

  “’Course, sugar.” She stopped and studied Nathalie’s face. The woman’s mouth pursed as her raised brows lowered and came together. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

  Nathalie couldn’t respond. If she said anything, this woman would speak again, and if she spoke, she would make something Nathalie didn’t want to be real, real. She stepped back and began to turn.

  “She’s gone,” the woman said, her voice suddenly quiet, but not quiet enough.

  It was too late. Nathalie felt as if an inescapable spell had been cast upon her.

  “There was an accident,” the woman continued, “out on Highway 10.” Her voice drifted up as she glanced toward the east. “About a quarter mile from the old Michoud Boulevard exit.”

  Nathalie knew the exit well. A southward turn took you to a long-abandoned theme park. A turn north led to Grunch Road. What had happened to Evangeline was no accident. Any more than what had happened to Nathalie near the same stretch of road.

  Nathalie heard newscaster Katie speak the name Lincoln Boudreau. She turned back, and the woman leaned into her. “Yeah, Vangie and her boyfriend, too. I used to date him, but he took up with Vangie after I broke it off with him. Nice guy. Pretty, too. But . . . ,” she said with a faraway gaze, “it wasn’t right.” She shrugged. “Accident only happened about an hour ago, but look at all this.” She gestured with her whiskey bottle toward the bouquets and votive candles in glass holders. “Vangie used to look after everybody. People loved her.” She took another drink. “Yes, everybody loved Evangeline.” She lifted the bottle in salute. “Here’s to you, Vangie,” she called out at the top of her lungs, then she started crying.

  Nathalie could feel the spinning of the earth pressing her against its surface, like one of those carnival rotor rides the moment before the floor drops away. She felt sick to her stomach. She turned away from the woman and started walking, then running, toward the river. Her breath came more quickly, and perspiration broke out on her forehead, but no matter how fast she ran, she couldn’t escape the stench of smoke. It rode her skin; it twined through her hair.

  It brought her back to the horrors at the burning of the wicker man.

  She’d watched the torches touch down. A man’s laughter, full of pride and triumph, had filled the air as the flames shot high, though the laugh had slid seamlessly into fearful, animal shrieks. Emil had clutched her in an icy, unyielding grip, until a shadow had swooped in from overhead. It snatched Emil up and away, his curses ringing out over the stunned gathering as the demon carried him alive into the heart of the fire.

  Then all hell had broken loose. Nathalie’s mind was filled with horrors beyond what it could contain. The shadows feeding. Showers of blood and shreds of khaki.

  From the far side of the burning pyre, Nathalie had caught sight of Alice, walking in her direction, though not toward her. Alice had continued without hesitation, like she was in some kind of trance, into the heart of the fire, and then she was gone.

  As the nightmare vision faded, Nathalie found herself before Vèvè, focusing intently on the symbols painted on the panes of its windows. But it wasn’t like it used to be. Nothing was like it had been. The faces that had always gazed out at her—some fearful, some jubilant—were gone. Nothing remained for her eyes other than the flat painted sigils.

  Had they lost their power during the Longest Night, or had she herself moved to a different frequency, one that left her incapable of recognizing the forces embodied by the symbols? There was nothing for her here now. Neither fear nor comfort.

  Nathalie caught sight of her own reflection playing hide and seek with her through the vèvès, and she began to scream, the sound turning deep and guttural as rage seeped up through the earth into her feet, climbing like sap through her legs, through her core, and finally releasing itself through her mouth.

  The world spun around her again, and the longest night was done. Somehow the world had decided to lurch forward into another day. She stood on Decatur Street, grasping the bars of the locked gates of Jackson Square. She heard the Mississippi flowing a couple of hundred feet behind her, whispering its never-ending story beneath the honking of horns and the banging of garbage trucks, adding its own ancient perfume to the aroma of deep-fried dough and the scent of diesel fumes.

  The sky in the distance was blue, but patchy fog still filled the park, blurring, although not erasing, the palmettos and the statue of Jackson on horseback, as well as the lower half of the cathedral. Nathalie watched on as four crows rose up from the foggy ground and took together to the sky. The light of the rising sun caught them, setting them ablaze, their wingtips catching first, their own wings fanning the flames as they flapped harder, rose higher.

  They circled overhead, rising and diving, like kids playing tag. Nathalie sensed no pain, no fear. If anything, they seemed happy. The wind rose, lifting them higher, and as they fell away to ash, Nathalie felt a sense of peace, of a long-hoped-for release. Their happiness was infectious, and Nathalie felt her own heart lightening.

  Something fell from above, landing a foot inside the gate. Nathalie knelt and reached through the bars to catch hold of the object. She drew it out between them.

  She held a necklace, like from a child’s play set, made of plastic with fake gold plating and plastic crystals resembling diamonds and emeralds. Nathalie gazed up from the necklace to the rising sun, her eyes fixed on its brightness, its shadow image tattooed on her eyelids when she blinked.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and dropped the toy necklace.

  “Come with me,” Alice said, taking her hand. “I’ve been looking for you.” Alice lifted her hand and kissed it, her warm brown eyes never releasing Nathalie’s own. “From the beginning.”

  EPILOGUE

  April 30

  Hoping to beat the crush and inevitable confusion at the Canal and Carondelet stop, Fleur excused herself to her fellow passengers, then squeezed between the streetcar’s mahogany bench-style seats, making her way to the door. She held an oversize shopping bag filled with sample linens in each hand. The riders were mostly tourists for whom the short St. Charles line ride was both an adventure and a slight disappointment. Always expecting more, they tended to rise slowly and clog the aisle once the streetcar reached the end of the line at Canal. The rest of the passengers were New Orleans residents who chatted with the visitors, offering directions, advice, tips on the restaurants other tourists hadn’t yet discovered. Fleur smiled as she descended from the car. The visitors were happy to be here, and the people of New Orleans were happy to have them, remembering it wasn’t so very long ago some were arguing the city should be abandoned.

  Canal Street still acted as the dividing line between Carondelet and Bourbon, even as it had once provided a buffer between New Orleans’s long-established Vieux Carré and the upstart American Quarter, the median between its lanes becoming the original “common ground,” since it offered a neutral territory between the two entrenched groups. Of course, borders once established will be crossed, and Fleur’s own ancestors counted among the first wea
lthy French-Creole families to abandon the French Quarter and build a grand house among the English-speaking newcomers. “Fidélité et Tradition”—loyalty and tradition—might be the motto emblazoned on the Marin family crest, but the Marins had always known how to divine shifts in power and had always done whatever they deemed necessary, regardless of what had to be sacrificed, to ensconce themselves in the heart of the new order.

  Fleur had long felt no loyalty to tradition or to New Orleans. At least not until it seemed that it might all be lost. Fleur had loved the city from afar, holiday visits and anonymous six-figure donations to aid recovery, but never a thought of homecoming. As Fleur crossed the common ground of Canal Street, the bags she carried bumping into her knees, she wondered if things had been different, if she hadn’t needed to return to New Orleans for Lucy’s sake, would she have come home? It meant something, Fleur reckoned, that she did still think of the city as “home.” It meant something that Fleur wished Lucy could have loved New Orleans more. Maybe under different circumstances, maybe with more time . . . Nothing more than moot conjectures now.

  A young man wearing a pocketed red apron stood on the corner of Canal and Bourbon, scanning the faces of passersby, the golden fleur-de-lis embroidered on his Saints cap catching the sun as he did. “Swamp tours,” he called out to no one in particular, holding up a handful of glossy trifold pamphlets. “Plantation tours,” he continued his chant. “Ghost tour, lady?” he said, addressing Fleur as she passed before him.

  Fleur managed to offer him a quick smile and shake her head before the tears started. She didn’t need a tour. She knew firsthand spirits did indeed pass along the streets of New Orleans, only they were never the one you’d wish to see. The gods knew she’d been trying. Reaching out, and waiting, waiting, waiting for any sign of her dear Lucy.

  For nearly a month after Lucy’s final death, Fleur hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave the house, as if she expected at any moment her daughter might return, dropping her latest unnecessary and extravagant purchases at the foot of the stairs and demanding Fleur to take her “somewhere nice for a change” for dinner.

  The one kindness the universe offered was that the liquor store had one-hour delivery.

  Fleur was doing her best to rewrite her memories, to substitute in her mind the pious lie she’d hatched for the world in place of the actual horror she had faced. The lie itself was horrible enough. Fleur had dressed for the party they were to attend, then gone downstairs to look for Lucy, only to find her lying on the floor of her grandfather’s former study. Gone. In the gown Fleur had made for her.

  Such a beautiful girl. Such a healthy girl. Such a shame. The neighbors had sometimes spoken these words behind her back, sometimes to her face.

  Sometimes, when her loss was still juicy news, they’d used it to fill the lull in party conversation. You’ve heard about the Marin girl?

  Sometimes, they had been unable to say anything at all, their own hearts breaking in sympathy for Fleur’s devastation.

  It might have been because the coroner’s office was long accustomed to turning a blind eye to any aberrations surrounding deaths associated with the witches of New Orleans. Or perhaps Warren had used his political clout. Or maybe it was only the approaching holiday, and the coroner didn’t want to take on any more paperwork than he had to. Regardless, the coroner had identified Lucy’s congenital heart disorder as the cause of death and released her body for burial.

  Within hours of the release, Fleur had boarded the plane Warren had chartered to carry her and Hugo, along with Lucy’s remains, to D.C. Warren and Meredith had canceled the large wedding they’d planned and married instead after the new year in the office of a judge friend. Ironic, really, that Fleur had found herself at Lucy’s graveside, holding the very pregnant Meredith as the woman sobbed into her shoulder. The galling truth was that Meredith, too, was shattered by the loss of Lucy. Fleur had left D.C. knowing she couldn’t bring herself to hate the woman. At least not any longer. In time she might not despise Warren either.

  January followed, a string of bleak and hazy hours, curtains drawn, a single lamp burning in her bedroom day and night. Perfunctory, level responses to the ringing phone. Pots of tea whenever anyone dropped by, “to see how you’re doing.” She found it almost funny, watching her visitors try to maintain their cheerful expressions as their eyes took inventory of the mess she’d become.

  Only Hugo understood, for he hadn’t just lost Lucy, he’d lost Evangeline, too.

  The day after Christmas, when most people were still basking in the goodwill afterglow of the holiday, Evangeline’s friends had gathered for a memorial. Evangeline, with her generosity and faith in people, had made many friends in her lifetime. Mourners from all walks of life had come. At least that was what she’d heard.

  Fleur had gotten dressed to attend, then taken her dress off again. It would remain one of her greatest shames that she hadn’t pulled it together for long enough to help Hugo through the service. He’d told her he understood, and he truly seemed to.

  Hugo would come and go, unannounced in each direction. He’d show up with heavy bags of greasy hangover-cure food like Chinese takeout and donuts, or those odd little square burgers smothered in what had to be synthetic onions, or fried apple turnovers. Most visits included a fresh large plastic bottle of off-brand bourbon, or box wine with a tap on the side. The food sat untouched more often than not.

  She and Hugo would sit with each other for hours without speaking, sometimes without so much as a greeting. She would fall asleep to the sound of the television he’d turned on to do the talking for them, then wake alone to the silence, the television’s screen still giving off its flickering blue light, its sound muted.

  Finally, on a hushed, gray day toward the start of February, Fleur had gathered the courage to step back into the world. She had pulled on a pair of blue jeans she’d forgotten she owned and a fuzzy slate turtleneck that still held Lucy’s perfume and headed to a café on Prytania that Lucy had frequented. Lucy had graded the cafe as “adequate,” not a soaring recommendation in most circumstances, but an important distinction given that Lucy had failed all others south of Alexandria, Virginia, and west of Annandale, Maryland. Still, as the café was situated diagonally across from Lafayette Number One Cemetery and located in the same shopping complex as a bookstore, Lucy had branded the place as “the Triple B”—books, beans, and bones.

  Going to Lucy’s café had felt like a way to both hold on to her and take the first step toward moving on. She’d ordered her drink, a ghastly cinnamon-peach-mocha combination of Lucy’s own invention. She could almost hear Lucy’s voice as she directed the barista—a mocha with two pumps of cinnamon syrup and one pump of peach. The thought brought a smile to her lips. She was able to share this first true smile with the barista as she paid for the coffee and echoed the barista’s hope that she’d have a good day.

  An arriving patron held the door open for her, and Fleur had been happy, though surprised, the smile had held long enough to carry her through that encounter, too. She’d almost made it through the outing without incident; she had one foot over the threshold of the café when she heard a rising baritone voice coming from behind her. She didn’t have to turn around. She recognized it as belonging to one of her neighbors, a kindly old retired doctor she’d known her entire life.

  “The Marin girl, poor thing. She was living on borrowed time.”

  Not borrowed time, Fleur thought to herself, stolen time.

  Fleur had felt like she had slammed into a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. She dropped her paper cup and it fell to the ground, its contents shooting out like a geyser.

  Fleur didn’t remember how she made it home that day. One moment she was teetering outside the café, the next she was sitting alone in that mausoleum of a house, in the rarely used grand parlor, in front of a bottle of unopened scotch that twenty years ago had cost Celestin, she was sure, more than most people make in a year. She stared at the scotch
and tried to steady her trembling hand so she could open it, but then lifted the bottle and flung it with all her strength against the perfect white marble neoclassical fireplace. She watched the bottle shatter, then went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

  After that, she hadn’t left the house again, not even for a walk, until this project had come along to save her life.

  Fleur hefted her bags as she carried on down Bourbon Street until she arrived across the street from Bonnes Nouvelles. Hugo owned the building, though it was held in a trust he’d set up to conceal the fact he’d purchased it until he could present the papers to Evangeline on Christmas Day for her signature. Those papers would have transferred the ownership to Evangeline. But Bonnes Nouvelles had remained dark that day, as it had since the Longest Night.

  She paused there, allowing herself a moment to take in the transformation that had occurred since she’d last been here, only two days earlier. The building had been an unattractive tawny brown, the favorite color of its former owner, but no more. Brilliant, bright white had taken its place, and the window frames, doors, and twin balconies had been updated from a grimy flat white to a black enamel. In a step Fleur would have avoided, had she been left entirely to her own devices, the vault of the recessed arch over the center doors had been painted amethyst, and the rectangular inset below it had been rendered emerald green. The surrounding framework of the arch as well as the rosettes adorning the vault had been ornamented with actual gold leaf.