“It is done,” Lucian says, voice husky and tired. “It is done.”
As the last licks of flame reach toward the heavens, a coldness washes through me, like a window has been thrown open on a stormy January morning. I flex and contract my battle-damaged hands in front of me.
It’s leaving. The magic is leaving.
Henry meets my eyes, his face pale. He feels it too.
He stumbles over and kisses me hard on the mouth. When there are no images pushed into my head, and he doesn’t recoil from staticky pain, he pulls back, eyes widening. “It’s really over,” he says. “We did it.”
We melt into each other’s broken bodies, emotion spilling down our faces, and for a brief moment, we are the only people in the world.
We separate, his sliced hand cradled across his front. I can’t fix him anymore—but that’s okay. Everything will be okay.
“Oh my god, Xavier . . .” I stumble-jog across the temple—Andrew has Xavier’s damaged body propped against knees, the bindings around his ankles and wrists cut free. His ice-blue eyes are only half-open, and the blood...
I lock eyes with Andrew, fear rising in my throat. He shakes his head.
“Xavier, hey, come on—Dad—wake up. Look at me,” I say. “Look at me!”
Xavier’s lids flutter, and he smiles, his teeth and lips stained red. “Is it over?”
“It’s over. We can go home now. Let’s go home and be a family. All right? Wake up and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Hmmm... I need a cigarette.”
“Okay, let’s get on the helicopter and I will get you one. Yeah? Andrew and I are gonna help you up. You ready?”
His eyes close again.
“Xavier.” A tear tracks down his face as he smiles at me again. I take his hand. “I’ve got your back—just like you had mine. We’re gonna be a family now, remember? You said we could. You promised.”
“Henry is your family. Take care of him. I love you, Genevieve,” he says. “I’m tired now. Just give me a second.”
I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes it back, but then his grip loosens and his half smile fades and his eyes stay closed.
“Andrew . . . ?” I look up at him; he pushes two fingers against the pulse point on Xavier’s neck, and shakes his head again.
I lean forward and kiss Xavier. “I love you too, Dad. Delia is waiting for you.” And then I lay my head on his chest, listening for the heartbeat that is no longer there, because I want him to know he’s not alone, that his family was there for him as the greedy Iraqi soil drank in his blood. “Look after Mom for me,” I sob, laughing through my tears. “Loan her a shirt so she can get out of that silly costume.”
The inside of the temple is quiet. “Ma chère, we must depart,” Montague says, his hand on my shoulder. They’ve given me a few minutes, but the sun is rising.
“We can’t leave him here,” I say.
“Of course not.” Montague flattens his palm against my cheek. “We will take him home.”
I nod, and Henry helps me up. He uses his glove to wipe the tears spilling down my face. “I’ve got you now,” he whispers.
“Wait.” I move in a diagonal across the temple, to the far wall, and pick up Henry’s sketchbook in my singed, stinging, bloody fingers.
A record of everything we’ve lived through.
There are a few pages yet to be added.
“Now we can go,” I say, clutching the book against my chest.
46
“MIND IF I SIT?”
Ash only indicates he’s heard me with a slight shrug.
“How’re you feeling?” I ask.
“Like I wish every conversation here didn’t start with that question.”
“Right . . . sorry.” I lean back in my chair, my pressure-glove-wrapped hands cradled in my lap. The morning air is brisk, but spring is imminent. You can smell it on the breeze, in the soft rain that drips from the patio cover edge into the bright green grass. Tulips and daffodils are pushing through the soil, and the trees that were bare when I arrived at Croix-Mare back in February have exploded with their spring finery.
The corner of Ash’s blue wool blanket has slid off his shoulder; I want to move it for him, to cover him up, to keep him safe.
I sit still. He’s been avoiding me for weeks; I don’t want to blow a chance to actually talk to him now.
“How long will you have to wear those?” He looks at my curled fingers. The black patch over his missing left eye makes him look older . . . or maybe that’s just because of recent events. I know I feel about a hundred years old.
“Nutesh says a few more months. Until the grafts are healed.” The skin on my fingers and palms was so burned off after Babylon, Nutesh had to harvest skin from my thighs to repair my hands. “I’m down to eighteen hours a day, though, so that’s improvement.”
Water drip-drip-drips into a flowerpot Hélène has yet to fill with new seeds.
“Vi would’ve love it here. All this space to flip and run,” Ash says, a sad smile on his lips.
My throat aches. “And so many trees to climb.”
“She did love climbing trees. The higher, the better.”
“At least until she got stuck and you had to go up after her.”
Ash shakes his head. “Nah, she never really got stuck. She just knew that if she begged long enough, we’d go up after her. She didn’t like being alone.” Ash fixes the blanket himself. “I guess that’s what happens when you share your whole life with someone else—from the very beginning, all the way to the end.”
He wipes his cheek and turns his head away. He hates it when anyone sees him cry, especially me.
“Ash . . .”
“Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.” He sniffs loudly and clears his throat. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you trust us?” He shifts in his chair to finally look at me, the blanket slumping off his shoulders and into his lap. “Why didn’t you warn us, Genevieve? She would still be here if you’d warned us.”
“I couldn’t. I didn’t know how—”
“We knew you and your mother had ‘stuff.’ Things we couldn’t understand. You know my mother didn’t trust you.” He laughs on an exhaled breath. “I guess I should’ve listened to her.”
“You know I had no control over any of it. I was born that way. I couldn’t change it, any more than you can change that you were born with brown hair. I’ve lost people too, Ash.” I swallow hard, trying to dislodge the lump. “Don’t you think if I could go back and undo all of this, if I could choose to not have been a part of all this insanity, that I would? If I could’ve saved Delia and Violet and countless others who’ve died—”
“But you could have saved Violet. All you had to do was tell us the truth!” His anger bounces off the walls of the patio space and echoes across the grassy field.
“And say what, Ash? You never would’ve believed the truth!”
“Then you should’ve found a way to make me believe you, Genevieve.”
“I did what I thought was right.” I stand and move in front of him, blocking his view of the grounds. “I did what I thought was right because I wanted to save all of us.”
Ash looks up at me, his jaw set. “Well, you failed. You didn’t save all of us, did you?”
His comment knocks the wind out of me. He’s right. I didn’t save all of us.
The newly built stone mausoleum underneath the tree at the crest of the hill, next to the greenhouse, is proof of that.
Tears slide down my cheeks, but what’s the point? Tears are powerless to do anything to fix this, to fix us. When I look up, Henry is on the other side of the wide door, his hand flattened against the glass.
There’s nothing else I can say that will make this right, so I sit again, defeated, heartbroken that after all that work and energy and terror, I can’t save the friendship that has been as important to me as a limb for my entire life.
I dig in my pocket for tissue to wipe my dripping nose. “You’re g
oing home?”
“Not a lot more that can be done here,” he says. “My parents found a pain specialist in Seattle who specializes in traumatic injuries. Who’da thought having an eye carved out of your skull could cause so much trouble?” He laughs, but it’s not because anything is funny.
“There will never be enough years for me to make this up to you, Ash.”
“You’re right.” He looks at me, his face hard, his eye redrimmed. “It’s probably best that when my parents get here, you make yourself scarce. They’re not quite ready to kiss and make up.”
“Right. I know.”
He tosses his blanket over the arm of the rattan chair and moves to stand, still a bit unsteady on his feet.
“Can I—”
He shakes his head and glares at me, shoulders back. “I loved you, you know. You were our sister too.” His lip quivers, and then he strides past me, in through the door, his form darkening through the glass as the house swallows him up.
Henry waits for a moment, and then joins me on the patio, scooting Ash’s vacated chair closer. He hands me more tissue.
“He’s never going to forgive me,” I say.
“Give it time.” Henry’s hand is gentle on my shoulder.
“You didn’t see the way he looked at me.”
“We did what we had to do. You had no way of stopping what happened to Violet. That was so far out of your control—”
“But was it? I should’ve told them, Henry. I should’ve told them about her!” I push his hand away and sit back.
“They never would’ve believed you. No one would’ve believed any of this. No one outside this world could have possibly understood or predicted what was going to happen. We did what we could, Genevieve. And we saved everyone else in the process. You do realize that, don’t you?”
I nod and bury my face in the tissue. I thought I’d done all my crying in the six weeks since we’ve been home. Apparently not.
Henry wraps his arms around me, rubbing my back, whispering softly that we’re going to be okay. “Baby is asking for you,” Henry says.
I nod. Even with the books destroyed and Aveline’s terrible black magic gone, Baby’s recovery has been dicey. I have permanent scarring on my left arm and chest and a fake front tooth, forever reminders of what my sister did to me.
But Baby’s alive, and recovering, and I have never been more grateful for anything in my whole life.
Henry opens the door for us, the whoosh of warm inside air filled with the scents that have become home. I follow him down the main hall, stopping in my room briefly to grab my book. Baby likes it when I read aloud—the lingering effects of his illness cause headaches when he tries to read himself.
Graduated from the medical suite, Baby is in his own room again, the IV in his arm the last stage on his road to health. I’m pleased to find him sitting upright in bed. Color has returned to his lips and cheeks, and he’s wearing human clothes rather than a flimsy hospital-style gown. His room smells like a florist shop—Hélène has filled it with bouquets sewn from Delia’s seeds.
“Hey, a leannan,” Baby says.
“Hey yourself.” I perch on the edge of his king-sized bed. “You’re looking good.” I grab his paw of a hand in both of mine. “Can I get you anything?”
“Whiskey, neat.”
“Ha ha.”
“You asked.” He smiles, the sparkle back in his deep brown eyes. He needs a shave, and his hair is longer than I’ve ever seen it, a few sprouts of gray at his temples. When the magic drained from me in Babylon, it drained from all of us. Baby, and Nutesh and Hélène, will age normally now. It’s good we’re rid of this curse, but it also makes me too sad to think about.
“You been crying again?”
“Ash . . .”
“Ah.” He knows. “Give it time.”
“That’s what Henry said.” I kiss Baby’s fist. “He’s going home.”
“Nutesh told me. Katia and Aleks are in Rouen.”
“Ash said I shouldn’t talk to them.”
“Probably best. For now.” Baby nods to a coffee cup–sized tub on the nightstand. “Hélène made fresh aloe and shea butter moisturizer for our scars. Henry, you can help her later—use it on her hands?”
“Yes, absolutely,” he says. “I’m going to grab a coffee. Excuse me.”
As the door closes after Henry, Baby motions for me to move. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Now? Shouldn’t you rest?”
“I need some air,” he says. He points at his IV—I crank down the flow dial on the tube to stop the fluid so he can pull the needle out of the port on his arm. I then help him into a coat. “Bring a blanket. And your book.”
He’s definitely grown stronger with Nutesh’s heroic, real-world medical interventions over these many weeks, but his clothes are loose on him, which freaks me out a little. “Nothing a few good meals won’t fix,” he teases.
I grab a golf-sized umbrella and we exit through the patio where I was just sitting with Ash, along the walkway toward the greenhouses, and up to the crest of the hill where the massive oak stands alone, watching over the acres of lush green fields. It’s slow-going, but every step forward is just that—a step closer to home.
He stops in front of the tiny stone building. The wrought iron gate is always unlocked, and the roof was constructed with two massive skylights to make sure plenty of natural light warms the interior space. It’s not dreary and terrible like the mausoleum where I found the Life text—it’s beautiful and welcoming and warm.
The small pediment over the door is carved with “Vérité” in huge letters; just underneath, a second line: “The key to good is found in truth.”
The front, sides, and back of the structure have been wound with wire, like clotheslines wrapping the building, from which hang keys.
More antique keys than I have ever seen, some etched with La Vérité, others not. Either way, the sentiment is clear.
It’s almost impossible to walk inside—it’s filled to the absolute limits with flower-filled vases, potted plants, stuffed animals, religious figurines, drawings, bottles of wine and liquor . . . countless tokens of appreciation and gratitude.
Once word got out to the La Vérité network that Xavier had died, there was no end to the tsunami of gifts.
I’ve visited every day over the last few weeks since it was finished, and even before when the workers were cementing stones into place, so I could talk to the plaques on the wall that represent my fallen family. I brought my own tokens to leave on the shelf under Delia’s plaque—my tiny elephant fig-urine duo that Hélène found in my discarded clothing from when we first arrived at Croix-Mare, after the nightmarish attack in Washington State. Under Xavier’s, I’ve left his silver lighter he always had with him. Figured he might need it.
“He was a good man,” Baby says, his hand heavy on my shoulder. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to know him under different—better—circumstances.”
“Me too.”
We stay in the stone house for a while, paying respects to our fallen friends—Alicia, Thierry, Violet, even Gaetano, and other names belonging to people who fought long before me. I read cards and tokens, sometimes aloud to Baby, sometimes to myself when I can’t talk past the lump in my throat. When Baby’s energy begins to wane, I help him outside to the path, but he stops me.
“Let’s sit a while.” He takes the blanket draped over my arm and spreads it over the verdant lawn.
“It’s raining.”
“You have an umbrella, don’t you?”
“If you get sick, Nutesh will kill me,” I say.
“I’m alive. I want to feel like it.” He sits and pats the blanket next to him. “You brought a book?”
I nod and pull it from my waistband. Baby props the huge, open umbrella against the oak tree’s trunk, creating a canopy for us, and then lies back, closing his eyes, breathing deeply of the fresh, spring air. “What are we reading today?”
“Fellowship of the Ring.�
��
“Now you’re just being ironic,” he says. “Read to me, then. But skip the scary parts. They give me nightmares.”
A smile stretches across his face.
47
“GENEVIEVE . . . HEY.” HENRY WAVES HIS HAND IN FRONT OF ME. I PULL my headphones off, pausing the film on my laptop screen. “The captain is asking us to buckle in.”
You don’t have to ask me twice.
I’ve been waiting for this plane to land for what seems like a million years.
As I fold closed my computer and stuff my headphones into my bag, Henry pulls the blanket from my legs and folds it. Over the weeks of recovery at Croix-Mare, I’d often tease him about how good he is with tidying up. To which he replied, “At least one of us is.” In my defense, it took a solid month before I could even move my fingers again. Poor Hélène spent so much time helping me bathe, she now knows which moles on my back I should keep an eye on as I get older.
Henry helps me tie my boots. My fine motor skills still aren’t great. At night, when the pain is the worst, Henry strokes my hair and tells me stories of my mother’s life—his store of memories did not go away—to help me fall asleep. It’s during these moments that I find myself wishing Nutesh still had his healing gifts, that he could’ve fixed me—fixed Baby and Ash and even Sevda—so much faster.
But that’s the trade-off, right?
Our gifts for a future. Not having to look over my shoulder anymore. Not worrying if I will be assaulted by a demonic swarm with an acid touch and a cloak of spiders. Not having to worry about reinventing my still-young self when all the people I love die of old age. Not having to worry about going to prison for the murder of my best friend.
Turns out, even with the insider tips from Henry’s sketchbook cache of drawn memories, Aveline did clean out her wine fridge. But there was enough ricin residue in the trailer—and a string of unsolved deaths back in Quebec—that provided the necessary evidence to clear my name.
And despite efforts to make Ash understand, I’ve still lost him over it.
Like Henry and Baby say, give it time. Maybe someday he’ll forgive me.
And we’re alive. The scars left behind, those are forever. The healing, both hearts and wounds, will take as long as it takes. At least that’s what Nutesh says, especially when he sits with Lucian, a quiet shell of his former self who spends most of his days either playing his piano, lost in his own thoughts, or wrapped in a wool blanket on the wooden patio of one of the guesthouses on the Croix-Mare estate. When he’s lucid, he promises his son better days ahead, but Lucian has his own healing to do.
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