by Lyn Brittan
“Might as well put your little toy away, Rom Baro.” Breznik, or rather the projection of him, bowed down in mock submission. “You know you can’t hurt me.”
Bullshit. “Oh, I can. The next time I see you in person. The real you, you are a dead man. Now take your filthy image and get out of here while I return these people to their sleep.”
“This town is full of cemeteries, Luca. I’ll find another one.”
“Not anytime soon. This magic of yours is weak.” Breznik flickered like a skipping DVD scene. “Pathetic. Look at you; even now you struggle to hold up the image. Go on lick your wounds, because I’m coming for you.”
“You’re coming for me? How dare you!” The projection’s face turned a dark and dangerous red. “This is my city, Luca Dobregea – mine! My family worked this earth, lived on these rivers and swamps since before the Purchase, even before the French. We were here with the Spanish, the first citizens! It’s my right, and you won’t have her. This region? She belongs to me and my people.”
Seconds later, the image blinked out.
Luca called Stephan with orders to ready the supplies. He had a long night of soul sealing ahead of him, and he didn’t intend to go in ill-prepared.
****
Fanchon Marie couldn’t believe that he’d waltzed off to go play Batman. Alone.
New Orleans magic ran in her blood as thick as a double turned ribbon. She should have been out there protected her city, too. Was she? Noooooo. Rather than doing what she’d been placed on the earth for (though, not necessarily doing well), she orchestrated the move of her stuff into his place. Hardly seemed an equal partnership.
A stomping, nearly mute Gregorio clearly shared her sentiments, but he was the man who followed all rules to the letter. So when she asked him for a private room, he hadn’t been too shocked by his response.
“No.” The same answer to every question she asked today.
“Why not and ‘because’ is not an answer!”
The dark-haired man flashed his blue eyes, shrugged and carried another box upstairs while Fanchon Marie ran to follow him.
“But why—”
“Protection? Sex? Those would be my reasons anyway.” Another good natured sigh. “Look, he wants you in here and that’s that.”
“But he said I’d have my own room.” She winced at the whine in her voice.
He smiled in earnest. “Oh, you do, but it doesn’t have a bed. My idea.” She shot him a look. “C’mon, you have to appreciate the genius behind it.”
She did not.
“I’ll uh, go get you some hangers.”
Gregorio sidestepped out of the way while Fanchon Marie entered the monumental walk in closet. “You can get all the hangers you want,” she whispered. “There’s no place to put them.” Designer suits and ties lined every square foot of the closet. “Looks like our boy has a little clothing fetish.” The top of an island in the middle of the closet glittered with watches and rings that reflected the recessed lighting. “This is insane.” Had she missed something? Were his closet doors secret portals to a shopping center?
Well, if Luca expected her to share his space then he’d need to make some for her. Stack by stack, Fanchon Marie removed huge bundles of clothes and dumped them on a growing pile on the other side of the threshold.
Mount Clothing reached an elevation of nearly four and a half feet by the time Gregorio returned. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw it. Walked a few more steps then stopped again. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Moving in. Do me a favor and hang these in another room.”
“Be serious.” His eyes widened. “Oh my God, you are. I don’t want any part of this.”
“Luca told me to move in. No, scratch that, he demanded it. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. Now, are you going to help me?”
“No.” Monosyllabic Man returns.
“Fine.” Fanchon Marie marched over to the balcony, opened the door wide, and started chucking clothes off the ledge.
She didn’t know what look she expected Gregorio to have, but she certainly hadn’t anticipated seeing him smile as she went for her second stack of clothes to launch. “What’s so funny?”
“Jesus, woman. He’s going to kill you.”
She said nothing and kept working. Fanchon Marie lifted the next pile over, grunting the whole time. Still ignoring him, she dialed Evil Bones on the house phone. “Yes, Sophie, a word. If you go out back, you’ll find a pile of clothes that need to be removed. I don’t care what you do with them. Thank you.”
The phone barely grazed the holder when Gregorio spoke up. “Forgive my curiosity, but what do you propose to tell Luca when he asks what happened to thousands of dollars’ worth of clothes?”
“I’ll tell him the truth.”
He grunted. “That’s stupid. You would do better to say that moths ate them.”
“Shut up and get out!”
He bowed deeply and left. She heard his laughter bouncing off the walls though the closed door.
More anxious than bored, Fanchon Marie looked around. She needed something to concentrate on other than Luca, his closet, her lack of a room, or his current activities. Or her shop.
Oh, God, her shop. She counted back the hours since she’d been there. How many brides had she missed? She got up and did a loop around the room, in search of her cell phone. Where the hell was it? There! In her purse, on silent mode and with several missed calls. She tried to call her voicemail, but with one bar left, no dice. Fanchon Marie found the charger at the nearest outlet.
Her gaze landed on the unaddressed package in the corner next to it. Sophie must have brought it up at some point.
She sat down next to sit and gave the thing her first thorough inspection.
Magic.
Not overt, no, but present nonetheless. It was a magic hidden, but not well. At least, not from her. She flipped it and sniffed the bindings. Perhaps it was magic intentionally hidden from everyone but her. Someone wanted her to have this, but without drawing attention to it. Why? Fanchon Marie plugged in her phone, but went right back to the package.
The tan fingers of her right hand clasped around the gris gris Luca had returned, which hung from her neck. The left traced the edges of the package. It was a small box, a perfect square of ten inch measurements. It felt quite heavy though. Had someone sent box of bricks?
Turns out, yes.
Inside laid a perfectly smooth stone, a vial of water and a note with an address and a warning:
Come alone. Lives depend on it.
She flounced down on the floor with the box and its contents between her legs. She rested her hands and on her knees as she thought it out. This package had been sent long ago. Had lives already been lost, assuming this message was even real and not some stupid prank? Who would prank her though? No one she knew, and certainly not like this.
So what if it was real? Or what if it was something more? A trap, perhaps. She’d have to be an idiot not to consider it. However, the magic hadn’t felt malicious, just urgent. Insisting. She had to go.
Quickly, and as quietly as she could, Fanchon Marie made her way downstairs. The house was eerily silent. Gregorio has long gone into hiding after the closet incident, and Sophie did well to be out of reach when her dear Luca wasn’t around. The only people she met during her escape were two young guards, easily bypassed with a few harmless words of Vodou, and she was off.
She didn’t take a car. Like her ancestors before her, Fanchon Marie often drew her magic from the land. And so it was the land that carried her on this task. To the casual observer, she must have looked like a young woman out for a late night stroll. It would take a practiced eye to see more. If a passersby saw her kick off her shoes, they would likely have no notion that she did so to establish a closer link to the earth below her feet. When she stopped to pluck a flower from a budding bush, they would probably only see a woman enjoying nature, not absorbing it.
What she absorbed wasn’
t very much. Not on a strict linear scale of measurement anyway. She didn’t own this land. It wasn’t a cache of power that she could lay claim to, but it was a part of her. Some women wouldn’t leave the house without a favorite piece of jewelry; this was hers. She wore communal magic as an adornment and a talisman.
At length, she came to the address messily scribbled on the back of the note. The building was young by New Orleans standards. It didn’t have the old porch railings or trellises. In fact, it looked like something that could have been plucked from an old television sitcom from the 50’s, located in Anywhere, USA. The bricked chimney that punched through the roof was covered with a faded blue tarp. White window shingles had gone a deep green with mold and mildew and most were missing more than a few rungs. The top of the house sagged oddly in places and buckled in others, looking more like a gray lumpy hill, than a solid roof. Fanchon Marie breathed audibly, raised her hand to the door, knocked and waited.
“Come in,” a raspy, but strong female voice answered.
She rubbed her gris gris and crossed the threshold. Her mouth immediately dropped to the floorboard. The inside of the house gleamed so brightly that it nearly blinded her. Everything was in order, shined, well-placed, and brilliantly clean.
The old woman laughed. “It tends to have that effect on people. Now sit. We have much to discuss.”
Fanchon Marie stared at her. Old, but beautiful. Her age, however, and her ethnicity were both indeterminate. Silver hair hung loose to her bosom, and she was decorated with emeralds in every possible shade of green. She ignored this rather rude appraisal of her and leapt into conversation. “Come, sit. I’m not long for this earth and, my dear, neither are you. We must speak.”
Any icy shiver ran up Fanchon Marie’s spine, quickly replacing the amazement she felt milliseconds earlier. “What are you talking about? I don’t even know who you are?”
“A friend. There is power in a name, you understand. As for the other, I meant what I said. We will both die...and soon.”
Fanchon Marie’s heart drummed in her ears, but she didn’t interrupt. While the woman’s words terrified her, she knew they were the words of a true Seer. Something about them had a tenor that her heart recalled. Her grandmother and mother both had it. It didn’t surprise her that only the words terrified her, not the woman herself. The grand lady felt good – wholesome. She could be trusted.
“I can’t see the ending for you, though it won’t be the same as mine. My own will be complete and final. My soul, spirit, and body will end as one.”
“And mine?” Fanchon Marie asked.
“Will not. It must be this way, although the good Lord has not seen fit to tell me why.” She leaned back into her sofa and took a sip of a steaming hot beverage. “Your death,” she continued, “will not end you – if you fight. I’ve seen two futures. One of torment in death and another of a long, happy life. Never before have I seen two destinies shown for one person.”
Fanchon Marie collected herself enough to speak. She knew better than to question the woman’s visions or warning. She’d group up with a Seer or two and long ago accepted the strength of their power, even if she never fully understood its source. “It means,” she said carefully, “that both things could happen. Yes?”
The matronly woman nodded.
“Why do I trust you?”
She chuckled at this, but not unkindly. “The world is old. There’s nothing new in it. We’re all made of bits of something else. Maybe I’m made of a bit you know. Remind you of someone you loved? Trust is the easiest instinct. It’s in our gut. Like animals. They know in a minute when it’s time to run or it’s time to love. We’re the same way, but people don’t listen to it. You think a squirrel from here, who ain’t never seen a tiger, gonna stay around one if he ever meets it?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Sure you right! Cause it knows. What I said about bits, remember? And what stuffs made of.” The old lady slapped Fanchon Marie on the knee. “You’re a squirrel. Brave one. Stupid, though. You’re running from something you don’t need to be running from. It’s gonna put you right where you don’t wanna be. Don’t fight the wrong thing. You ain’t got time for all that. You have a real battle. One you can’t play around with. You get what I’m saying to you?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“You’re not afraid then?”
“I’m terrified.”
“Oh. Well, so am I,” the woman said, laughing as she did. “But you must fight, and you must win.” She pointed to the note Fanchon Marie held in a death grip. “The vial I sent you, you must drink half of it on the day of your wedding. The other half must be given to someone who knows and understands the healing power of waters. I cannot see him, nor tell you who he is, but you will know. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“It’s the only way to make everything end right,” the woman said.
“Make what end right?”
The exasperation in the lady’s voice matched her own. “I don’t know, child. But it must be done, and you must be quiet about it. Tell no one of our meeting.” She grabbed Fanchon Marie’s hands and kissed firmly. “You must go now. My death is coming quickly, and you must not be near when it does. I wish I had more time with you. In the long ago years, I knew your family well – we studied the old ways together. But you, oh, I would have loved to have known you well. I would have loved you, period. Of this, I’m sure. Maybe a bit of me did a long time ago.”
So was Fanchon Marie. She wanted more time with this woman and had no intention of letter her go yet. “We can try to—”
“Look around you.”
Fanchon Marie did as directed. The walls of the home were adorned with pictures of every size and shape. “This is my family. The ones I knew as a child are gone, and those who children now, are happy. What more do I need to accomplish?” The hands around her wrists tightened. “My future is certain. I can’t change it any more than I can change the visions that led me to you. It is done.” And the topic was closed. She rose, brought Fanchon Marie up with her, and they drifted towards the door. Fingers, wrinkled, gnarled, and twisted by time, wiped tears away from the younger woman’s cheeks. “Go now and do not cry for me. After all, we’ve only just met. Rejoice for yourself and fight. Do as I’ve told you and live. I’ve had my life – spent it delivering and receiving messages. Yours is my last one, and I’m tired, to tell the truth of it. Now go. We will meet again, but only for a moment. Remember, trust your little squirrel.” The woman stopped, this time to wipe tears from her own eyes. “Good bye, dear. I’ve know you forever and not nearly a minute.” She smiled, turned away, and closed the door behind her.
Fanchon Marie made no attempts to stifle her tears and cried the entire walk back to Luca’s. Her sobs had cooled to whimpers by the time she reached the gates, but her heart ached just the same. She didn’t see the impending attack coming.
“Where were you? Why are you out so late?”
Sophie.
She sounded both mocking and accusing.
Fanchon Marie couldn’t tell her the truth. Or anyone else for that matter, even Luca. “Out for a walk. Is Luca home?”
“Trying to sneak back in then? Well, no he isn’t, but I will tell him of your comings and goings.”
Fanchon Marie shrugged and moved past her and continued into the house, up the stairs, and onto the bed. She grabbed Luca’s pillow, breathed his scent in deeply and cried herself to sleep.
****
Fanchon Marie heard Luca creep into the bedroom at four in the morning. Without a word of hello, she hurled a pillow directly towards his head.
“What the hell?”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through Luca!” Another pillow.
“You?” She couldn’t exactly see his face in this light, but given his voice, she had an idea of what it looked like. Still, she hadn’t spent all that time crying and fussing over his unconscious body to have him go run off and do something stupid again
. And anyway, she had had a rough day. The process of moving would have been a whole lot simpler with him there to help out. Never mind that her death had been foretold.
“I couldn’t stop worrying about you. I even missed fighting with you.” Fanchon Marie lowered her latest projectile. “What happened out there?”
“Hell.”
She knew the feeling. “Come here.” She needed to be near him as much as he seemed to need her. She wanted to feel safe again.
A slack-shouldered, tired lump of a man flopped on the bed beside her. “Help me get out of these clothes, Fanchon Marie. They’re unclean.”
Deft fingers unbuttoned the expensive fabrics. Fanchon Marie could feel the dirty magic. “They will have to be destroyed.”
“I know.” Luca kicked off his shoes and started in on his belt.
Compassion fastened around her heart. “I’ll get it.” Whatever he’d been though had been just as rough, too. “Relax your body and lie back.”
Luca jutted his pelvis forward as she tried to remove his trousers. “Don’t go getting any ideas, Rom Baro. You are still, as you say, marimé.” A tired smile snaked its way across his lips.
“Good thinking woman. Dirty sex? Good. Unclean magic, just come from fighting the undead sex? Bad. Very, very bad.”
Fanchon Marie bit back a smile after she removed his last bit of clothes. “Tell your friend downstairs that.” She paused to kiss his stomach before rising with outstretched arms. “Come on, let’s get you into the shower and cleaned up.”
“Join me.”
“No.” At his arching eyebrow, Fanchon Marie quickly threw her plan into the ring. “You take a shower while I draw a hot bath for us. How’s that sound?”
“Us?”
“Us. We need to talk about your night.”
“And then?”
“Oh, get in there!” Fanchon Marie turned her back to him and readied the tub. Next to his bedroom, this was her favorite room in his house. Their house. Their home. Like every other room, Neoclassicism and the Gothic married to create impressive columns and tall doors and royal opulence. She loved it.