by Cate Tiernan
Petra opened the door and headed briskly across the school yard to go off property, I hurried after her, and Clio followed me.
"Are we skipping out of school?" I had never done that in my life.
Petra gave me a quick glance, her eyes clear and blue and piercing. "Yes''
"Oh, Well: I nodded. "Okay: There's a first time for everything.
She led us to a Volvo station wagon, and five minutes later we pulled up in front of a small house, set back from the sidewalk and surrounded by one of the cast-iron fences I saw all over the place. The front garden was lush, so thickly planted that it practically concealed the house from the street. The house was small and painted a dark rust color, with natural wood trim. Two tall French windows opened onto the small porch, and the front door had stained glass around the main frosted pane. It was adorable.
After my dad had died, I'd felt more alone than I had thought possible. I'd practically wanted to die myself. Since I'd seen Clio yesterday, I'd been hoping and praying that somehow this would work out and the horrible, unbelievable turn my life had taken in the last couple months would be over. I wanted normalcy, a grandmother, a home, a sister. Real, normal people who would never take Dads place, but be a close second.
The front door opened directly into a sparsely furnished living room. I looked around with interest, as if examining my new home. I wished.
The furniture was simple and old-fashioned. The walls were painted a dusty rose. I felt comfortable here- it was so much homier than Axelle's black-leather art deco stuff. Like in Axelle's main room, the ceilings were ridiculously tall, maybe twelve feet? Fourteen.3 Two wooden bookcases were centered on the far wall, and I read their titles, hoping they would give me clues as to what kind of person Petra was.
Crystal Working.
My' breath caught in my throat as I hoped desperately that Petra was all into beading.
Wiccan Sahbats, Herbal Magick. Metal and Stone Work in Spells.
I couldn't keep the dismay off my face. All the hopes that had been born yesterday-my dreams for a real family, my sad need for a home and normalcy-withered inside me.
"You do voodoo" I muttered, blinking back tears. Then it hit me: Petra and Clio did this magick stuff- just like Axelle and the others. What were the chances of that? Just how common was it in New Orleans? I swallowed, feeling suddenly cold. Petra and Clio were my only family. Couldn't I trust them? Could I give them up, not have anything to do with them? I took a breath. I would hear Petra out. Then, decide. Everything in me wanted Petra and Clio to belong to me and me to them. I would wait and see. If they were connected to Axelle somehow…
"Not voodoo," said Petra with a little smile. "Bonne Magic. The Craft. Similar to Wicca, with the same roots. Now, come into the kitchen. We'll have tea."
The kitchen was painted a pretty green, and the two windows both had shelves of healthy houseplants in front of them. A large white cat was asleep on top of some newspapers on the kitchen table. I felt crushed, devastated. I'd been so stupid to get my hopes up.
"Get the cat off the table," Petra said, going to the cupboard and taking out three glasses.
Clio picked up the cat and handed him to me. "This is Q.Tip."
I held him awkwardly. Q-Tip sleepily opened his blue eyes and looked at me. Then he closed his eyes and went heavily limp in my arms. For a moment I was surprised at how he'd accepted me, but then I realized I didn't look like a stranger.
"Q-Tip is a big boy," I murmured, looking around for a place to put him down. I didn't see one and finally just sat in a chair and arranged him on my lap. Petra put a tall glass of tea in front of me, and then the three of us were sitting there together. In a witch's house.
"He's deaf" Clio said as an icebreaker. "A lot of white, blue-eyed cats are."
"How do you call him?" I asked, trying to be polite.
Petra smiled, and suddenly her somewhat forbidding, stern-looking face relaxed and an affectionate warmth stunned me. I was still blinking in surprise when she said, "We stomp on the floor, hard enough to send vibrations through the house. Then he comes running. He comes even if he's outside, if he's close enough."
I looked down at the huge cat, impressed. He purred.
"Unfortunately, until just a few years ago, when Clio was mad, she'd stamp her feet and slam doors," Petra went on wryly. Clio made a semi-embarrassed face across the table, "Finally she had to learn to get her temper under control, if only for the cat's sake."
"He kept running up, wanting treats," Clio admitted, and I smiled.
"Why do you do magick?" I blurted. "It seems so-"
"It's our family's religion, dear," Petra said, as if explaining why'we were Lutherans. "What do you have against it.1"
I realized I was on thin ice. Despite the magick, despite my worries about Axelle, I couldn't help wanting Petra to love me, to want me. I shrugged and drank my tea.
"I don't think I've ever stamped my foot or slammed a door," I said, returning to the earlier conversation. "Dad and I didn't fight much."
Petra 's face softened when I mentioned my dad. "I'm very sorry you lost Michel, dear," she said gently. "I only met him once, but I thought he seemed very nice,"
"If you met him, why didn't we both go with him?" I asked, and saw the same curiosity on Clio's face.
Petra sighed and took a deep drink of her tea. I was halfway through mine-it was unusual, not sweet, though I tasted traces of mint and honey. With surprise I realized that I felt unexpectedly comfortable, even relaxed.
Tm going to tell you both what happened," Petra said, folding her fingers around her glass. "Yes, obviously, you're twins. Identical twins. And I was the one who separated you."
Clio
This oughta be good, I thought.
Across the table, Thais had her gaze locked on Nan, and I wondered if the tea had kicked in yet, I could taste a trace of valerian and knew shed brewed something to calm us all down, make this easier.
"I knew your mother, Clemence, was pregnant, of course, but she wasn't married and I didn't know who the father was until the night she came to me, in labor.” Nan took a deep breath. Tin a midwife, and Qemence wanted me to deliver her baby at home, not in a hospital," she explained to Thais.
"Why? "Thais asked.
"Because… she trusted me more than a hospital," Nan said slowly, as if reliving that time. "Because I'm a witch. As was Clemence."
I hid my smile behind taking a sip of tea. Thais sat back in her chair, looking, if possible, more horrified. I got up and put some cookies on the table. Numbly she reached out for one and took a distracted bite. I saw Q-Tips ear twitch as she dropped crumbs on him.
"Witch how, exactly?" she asked, and I looked at her thoughtfully. She was bummed but not shocked. That was interesting.
"Our family's religion is called Bonne Magic," Petra said. "Good Magick, in English. White Magick, if you will. It's been our family's religion for hundreds of years-since about the sixth century. My ancestors brought it to Canada, then into America to Louisiana hundreds of years ago. But there's more to it than that."
Thais sipped her drink and absently stroked Q-Tips fur. I wanted Nan to get to the part where she'd deprived me of my father. And deprived Thais of her grandmother, I admitted. If I thought of it that way, I couldn't help feeling I'd been the lucky one.
"Many people practice the Craft in different forms," Nan went on."Wicca is a big example and the closest religion to what we have. Bonne Magie descended from the earliest forms of Wicca-the Celts brought it to Brittany when they came as refugees to escape the Anglo-Saxons."
I took a deep, impatient breath. Cut to the chase.
"Anyway" said Nan, "we and our ancestors have achieved something more. We've tapped into the deep magick contained within Nature herself. We have power."
Thais looked at her blankly. I'd grown up knowing all this, so it was like watching someone fold laundry. But to Thais it was all new, and I wondered what she was thinking.
"Uh-huh" she said, s
ounding like she was humoring a nutcase. Again I had to hide a smile. "Power"
Petra heard Thais's tone. "Yes, my dear, power. Power and energy are contained within every natural thing on this planet, there to be tapped into, used, if you know how. Our religion is about knowing how, and even more important, knowing why"
Thais licked her lips and glanced sideways, as if plotting an escape route,
"Look" I said, pushing my glass away. I took the saltcellar and dumped a small pile onto the table. I looked at it, then closed my eyes. I slowed my breathing and centered myself, then started singing softly under my breath. The basic form was in Old French, and it rhymed. I substituted a few words to make it apply to this situation.
Salt of the earth Power of life I shape you I make you mine We become one.
I pictured the tiny, individual salt grains, I let my energy flow out and around them so it was like I had no boundaries in my body anymore. I was part of everything, and because I was part of everything, I could affect everything.
A minute later I opened my eyes. Thais looked like someone had just smacked her upside the head. She stared at the table, then up at me. She scooted her chair back, leaned over Q-Tip, and looked beneath the table for hidden wires or magnets.
"Its just salt," I told her. "Its not, like, metal shavings. Not a lot can affect it. Except magick."
She looked at the table again, where a round happy face made of salt smiled at her.
"Of course," Petra said dryly, "magick also has larger, more important purposes. But that was just one small demonstration of what we call power, I don't think Michel knew your mother was a witch. He himself was not. And I tell you all this to set the stage, to help explain why I acted as I did.
"Our family can trace its line back more than a century," Nan said. "And since the very beginning, it's had an issue with twins,"
"What?" I'd never heard that before, "An issue?'
"Yes," Nan said. "In our line, twins are special because they can join their magick to become very powerful-much more powerful than any other two people using their magick together. Identical twins who know what they're doing can have a great deal of power indeed." Nan met my eyes, then Thaiss. "Even a dangerous amount of power,"
This was the most interesting thing I'd heard in ages, I looked at Thais speculatively, wondering how long it would take to get her up to speed magick-wise.
"So people in our line fear twins," Nan went on, and I frowned, "More than once, a set of identical twins has used their combined power not for good, but for dark purposes. They caused destruction, disaster, and death. The most recent time was about two hundred years ago"
"Were they crazy, to use it for evil?" I asked. Seeing Thaiss face, I explained, "Any magick you put out into the world comes back to you threefold. So anyone with half a brain is careful to use their force only for good. Anyone who uses magick for a dark purpose is risking having hellfire come down on them."
"Yes" Nan agreed. "And hellfire did come down on them, their families, their communities, with disastrous consequences. This happened not only once, but at least three times in our history. So even today, in the twenty-first century, our people are wary of twins. More than wary-afraid. And fear makes people dangerous. When your mother gave birth that night, almost eighteen years ago, to twins, identical girls, I instantly knew that you would face prejudice, fear, persecution, and even danger from people afraid of you."
"But-I mean, how many of you are there? Why couldn't we have just moved someplace else and grown up normally? How many people would even know about us and would care enough to actually try to hurt us?" Thais shook her head.'I still don't get it."
"Of people who practice Bonne Magie, of course its hard to know an exact number," said Nan. "I believe there are roughly twenty thousand or so. Maybe six thousand in America, more in France and other parts of Europe. Maybe eight thousand in Canada."
"That still doesn't seem like that many," Thais argued. "There're two hundred and ninety-five million people in America."
"Comparatively, its not," Nan agreed. "But you don't need huge numbers for a group of people to wield a great deal of influence and for their powers to stretch over far distances. Our particular. famille, with less than a thousand hereditary witches, all grew up with the cultural fear of our kind having twins."
"So you split us up," I said. "Voila, no more twins."
"Did my dad know?" Thais asked.
Nan seemed uncomfortable. She shook her head, looking sad, remembering. "Your mother knew, of course. That's another reason she came to me. She was afraid for you, even before you were born. She kept you a secret from everyone, even me, even your father, until the night she had you. That night, she begged me to keep you safe. Thais, you were born just before midnight, and Clio, you were born just after mid-night. That's why you have different birth dates. And then, with her dying breath, Clemence made me promise to do everything within my power to keep you safe"
Thaiss eyes were brimming with tears. Seeing that made my own eyes fill.
Nan went on. "When I found out that Michel didn't know there was more than one baby, I didn't know what to do. Then-something went wrong during the delivery. Even if Clemence had been in a hospital, nothing could have saved her. It all happened so fast. But she had a minute, and she knew she was dying, and she begged me to save her daughters"
Nan cleared her throat and took a sip of tea, Thais's tears were running down her cheeks, I wiped my own eyes and swallowed the lump in my throat.
"I had no time to think," Nan took a strand of hair and tucked it back into her long braid. "Michel was waiting in the next room, Clemence had just died, and I would have to call the police, the hospital," I couldn't even imagine what that night had been like for her.
"And I had these two infants, wrapped in blankets," Nan said, "So I hid one, and I called Michel in and placed the other in his arms. In that one instant, he gained a daughter and lost his lover, I never mentioned the other baby or the twin curse, I told him where to take the baby for her to be checked out, I told him where they would take Clemence and about the arrangements he would need to make. He was shocked and heartbroken, and never have I felt sorrier for any human being than I did that night for Michel, holding his daughter, mourning his lost love."
Now I was crying too, for the young parents I had never known, for how painful it must have been for Nan, for myself, losing a mother, father, and sister all in one night. And for Thais, because she had lost her mother, grandmother, and sister in one stroke too,
"That was in Boston," said Nan, "Within a week, I had closed my midwifery practice and moved with Clio to New Orleans," She put her hand on mine, "I had a birth certificate made for you, and then you were mine. And though it absolutely broke my heart in two, I didn't leave my forwarding address with Michel, and I threw his information away. I didn't want to take any chances that one of our famille would discover you and perhaps make their own plans for ensuring that you never have a chance to wreak your powers of destruction,"
"But then why am I here?" Thais cried, her voice broken with tears. "What's happened?"
"Obviously someone has found out," said Nan, an edge of steel underlying her calm voice, "Which leads me to ask: how did your father die, and who do you live with now?"
Thais blinked, trying to gather her thoughts, "Uh, Dad died in an accident" she said, taking a tissue from the box on the table, "He got hit by a car that jumped the curb," For a moment she frowned, thinking, as if some' thing was just occurring to her, but then her face cleared and she went on, "Then in court I thought I was going to go live with Mrs, Thompkins, who was our best friend, like a grandmother to me. But Dad's will gave me to an old friend of his, who I'd never even heard of"
"Who?"
Nan said, her fingers tightening around her glass,
"Her name is Axelle Gauvin," Thais said, and Nan 's glass tipped, spilling tea, I saw Thais's eyes narrow slightly as I jumped up to get a dish towel. Tea and ice had spilled on Q-Tip,
and he leaped down in disgust and trotted into the other room.
"So I take it you've heard of Axelle Gauvin?" I said dryly as I moped up spilled tea.
"Yes.' Nan said grimly, "She's from our line, our original line. Her ancestors and. mine were in the same famille"
"She's a relative?" Thais asked intently.
"Not by blood.' Nan said. "Its more like a clan. Many people came here from Canada, of course. Many of them are now called Cajuns, But our particular group had fifteen families. Clearly, Axelle knows about you and Clio, She's brought you here for a reason,"
Thais looked stricken, "That's what I've been worried about. How did she know when my dad died? How did she get to have me? And then both of you do magick-" Thais's chin trembled, "Oh God," she said faintly, sounding near tears. "Did she kill my dad?"
'Axelle is a lot of things, but a murderer? I have to say I don't think she could do it," said Nan firmly, "You've been safe with her this far. No one's tried to harm you, have they?"
Thais frowned, thinking, "Not really, no" She shook her head,"Do you know Jules and Daedalus too?"
Nan nodded,
"They're over at Axelles a lot" said Thais, "They're a little creepy, but no one's ever tried to hurt me. In her own way, Axelle seems kind of concerned about me. She gave me a cell phone. Oh, and one night-I had a bad dream, Axelle did spells in my room after that."
For several minutes we sat there, each of us lost in thought. This was a lot of stuff to take in. Now I understood why Nan had freaked about Thais and why she'd put all the protection spells on the house and yard, I wondered if I had to go back to school today and if there was any way I could sneak over to see Andre instead.
T think for now, it's safe for you to stay at Axelles," Nan decided. "I'll talk to her, and then we should consider your living here."
Thais's face lit up just as I felt mine shut down. There was no room here for Thais. I mean, she was okay, and she was my sister, but this was all happening too fast,
"But for right now, stay at Axelle's. Keep your eyes and ears open; be extra careful, extra cautious" said Nan, "And I also think it would be safer if you started learning some magick. It would help you protect yourself."