The Book of the Unwinding

by J. D. Horn

  Fleur had positioned herself between Evangeline and the setting sun, eclipsing the light.

  “Sorry about all what?” Evangeline heard Hugo ask. He drew up alongside her, giving her shoulder a squeeze, and she placed her hand over his. Always on her side, he was, even though he had to see her choice—to make what could have remained his family’s private business a public spectacle—foolish, perhaps even selfish.

  Evangeline lifted her gaze to meet Fleur’s eyes, which telegraphed caution. Seemed she wasn’t ready to share her secret with her nephew. Maybe she was worried that the more who knew the truth, the easier it would be for Lucy to learn, or perhaps there was another reason for her reticence. Either way, soon she wouldn’t have a choice. But for now, it was her choice.

  “For this parody of a trial,” Evangeline said. “For rubbing your family’s noses in Celestin’s dirt.”

  “I think,” Fleur said, “you mean what’s left of our family. Celestin killed my brother and my nephew without remorse because it was expedient for him to do so. Because he needed them to die so that he could capture the magic in The Book of the Unwinding. I was next on his list. I wouldn’t be standing before you now if I hadn’t unintentionally stoked his inflated ego. I’m sure he only granted me . . . and Lucy, too . . . a temporary reprieve because he thought my rebellion against Gabriel Prosper reflected well on him. Then there’s Nicholas. He would’ve killed him the night of the ball, too. Or eventually. That’s a given. But few could know better than you how Celestin destroyed Nicholas without ever laying a finger on him.”

  Hugo squatted beside her, examining the grass, calculating, Evangeline surmised, the damage it could do to his light gray pants. He plopped down on his seat. “Celestin wanted me dead, too, but I didn’t even merit the personal touch.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a flask. “He delegated my murder to those crazy crones. If you hadn’t flown my sweet pink cheeks out of that hall, I’d be dead for sure.” This was as close as she’d ever heard Hugo come to expressing gratitude for anything . . . to anyone. He opened the flask and held it out to her. She sat up and accepted it, her fingers brushing his. That simple touch finally toppled the levee that had held back her unspoken shame. Guilt swirled in all around her, almost causing her to drop the drink.

  She owed him the truth she’d been hiding from him, the truth that had been gnawing at her gut for months. She spat it out. “They wanted me to kill you.” She risked a quick glance to see how he took the news. He looked sad. Tired. But not in the least bit shocked.

  “Yeah. I don’t speak bird, but I kind of picked up on that.” He wagged his finger at the flask. “Go on. Doctor’s orders.”

  She raised the flask, then lowered it. There was a bit more truth she had to share. “For a moment, I . . .”

  “Got that bit, too. But you didn’t. You wouldn’t. Now drink.”

  She took a swig, nearly choking it back up. Nothing like straight vodka served body temperature.

  “You did the right thing,” Fleur said. There was a slight tugging on Evangeline’s empathic power. Fleur was vying for her attention, inviting her to divine the meaning behind her words. She wanted Evangeline to know that she understood and approved of her choice.

  “I’m not sure what I would have done in your shoes.”

  Another coded message. A thank-you. An acknowledgment that Fleur knew exactly what she would have done. She would have risked it. Laid claim to the full pool of blood magic, consequences be damned. She was grateful that Evangeline spared her this trespass.

  “Celestin committed many crimes,” Fleur said, closing the sympathetic channel she’d opened between them. “Now he’ll face a trial by a jury of his peers.”

  “More like a jury of vultures,” Evangeline said. “Do you even recognize half of these people?”

  “Half, yes. They either attended Celestin’s ball or had loved ones who died there. These are the witches who’ve recovered enough to be angry, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg. If everyone left bereaved by that night showed up, the walls of this cemetery would strain and burst. Those who’ve come with hope of profiting off the pain of others will be sorted out in short order. Not to worry.”

  Hugo signaled with a wave that Evangeline should return the flask. She handed it over, and he offered it to Fleur, who refused it with a shake of the head. “Your loss, chère Tatie,” he said, then took a long draught, shaking his head and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He offered the drink to Evangeline again. “Awful at any speed, but no way I’m facing this unfortified.”

  Evangeline sat up and accepted the flask. She took a drink. It wasn’t so bad now that she knew what to expect. She hoped that precept would apply to the rest of this ordeal. “I’m sorry,” Evangeline said, “but given that throwing this fete might have killed me, I would like to understand the details.”

  Fleur smiled. “You’re learning. Good.” Her gaze rose, fixing on a point behind Evangeline. Evangeline glanced back to see Fleur was studying the witches awaiting them. “My guess is that a good twenty of those fine people have no standing in this case.”

  “Standing?”

  “They,” Hugo said, “weren’t directly affected by Celestin’s actions. If they weren’t affected, they don’t have the right to be here. They’re tourists. Hangers-on hoping to walk away with a relic.”

  “That’s why you’ll demand that all who claim to have standing undergo the ordeal of les Dents de la Vérité.”

  “Really,” Evangeline said, fighting back a laugh. “The Teeth of Truth?”

  “Yes,” Fleur said, her cautious tone telling Evangeline that she’d decided to sidestep, if not disregard, Evangeline’s derision. “Think of it as New Orleans’s take on Rome’s Bocca della Verità.” Fleur seemed to consider this an adequate explanation. She stood there, staring down at Evangeline, waiting for a lightning bolt of understanding to strike. Evangeline’s blank expression must have finally signaled that no such flash would arrive.

  “Well, there’s no practical reason you would have heard of it,” Fleur said, taking obvious pains not to make Evangeline feel stupid. Her attempt at tact made Evangeline’s embarrassment burn even hotter. In a flash, Evangeline realized that there was a whole wide world out there, but every breath she’d ever taken had been Louisiana air.

  “The Bocca is an old stone disk engraved with a vicious-looking face.” Fleur paused, perhaps to give Evangeline the chance to envision the item. “A preposterous, ugly bit of classical masonry, really.” Another pause. This one, Evangeline intuited, to help her internalize the appropriate degree of reverence with which she should speak of this carving—a lesser work whose craftsman’s name had not survived the ages, but still, an object of which any member of the Marins’ caste should have at least a passing awareness. “Experts posit that it started out with an entirely mundane purpose. Perhaps a drain cover.” A bit of trivia Evangeline could later employ like a watchword or secret handshake to mark herself as a member of polite society. Fleur, Evangeline realized, was offering her expertly curated access to what Fleur considered a basic cultural signifier. “As the stone’s original purpose was forgotten, a superstition grew up around it. People came to believe that it would bite off a liar’s hand.”

  It seemed that Fleur had decided to take Evangeline under her wing. Was she attempting to make amends or taking pity on a girl who might have been so much more if she’d had a better start in life? Both thoughts pissed Evangeline off. Both thoughts made her like Fleur even more. In equal measure. Hell. It was always complicated with these people. She’d chew on that later. For now, she needed Fleur’s guidance, if not about which fork to use, then for certain how to make it through an evening of witch politics. “It’s only a superstition, though, right? The biting part, that is.”

  “Yes. At least it appears to have been now, but here in Précieux Sang, it’s much more than that. There’s a spirit of place here, a guardian. You may have already sensed it. Maybe even noticed a sha
dow flitting past in your peripheral vision.”

  Evangeline felt a shiver up her spine, and her skin prickled up into gooseflesh. “Not so much,” she said. “I would’ve scaled the gate if I had.”

  “Then he must like you.” She pointed east. “There’s a tomb, a few rows over that way, but it isn’t really a tomb at all. No remains have ever been placed in it. It’s the spirit’s abode.”

  “The marble seal on the front is broken,” Hugo said, rising. “There’s a hole.” He formed parentheses with his hands. “About this big.”

  “Those who wish to validate their standing in the case against Celestin will have to reach their hands into the grave.”

  “But nothing is gonna happen, right? It’s just a harmless dare.”

  “Nope,” Hugo snapped his teeth, then offered her his hand. She took it more to please him than out of any need for reassurance.

  “It’s a rare practice,” Fleur said, her tone far too even, too reasonable to be speaking of a flesh-eating demon, “but so are these trials. When enough time passes between uses of the tomb, the truth is sometimes forgotten—or viewed as nothing more than an old witches’ tale intended to scare children. Over the years, a few foolish hangers-on have lost a finger or two to the perspicacious elemental. Actual witches, overconfident in their ability to obfuscate or in their certainty that the indwelling spirit is a bluff, have lost hands. Some have even lost arms.”

  “Argh,” Hugo cried out, stumbling forward and mimicking the scene Fleur had just described.

  “Cute,” Evangeline said.

  Fleur watched on, nonplussed. “You do realize he only behaves like a twelve-year-old when you’re around.”

  “I’ve always suspected as much.” Evangeline’s eyes wandered east, in the direction of the guardian’s tomb, and she tried to guess which vault played host to the entity. As her curiosity reached out, the demon caught hold of it, infiltrating her mind and twisting her empathy to its own purposes. Evangeline gasped out a breath of icy air.

  Loneliness. Hopelessness. Hunger. So very hungry.

  She stumbled backward, but Fleur’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist, preventing a fall. For several moments, Evangeline struggled to catch her breath, her lungs feeling like they’d been filled with sharp ice crystals. “It’s one of those things you said Daniel described,” she said, gasping out the last of the frozen, sepulchral air. “One of the hungry shadows.”

  Fleur handed her over to Hugo and then circled around them, taking a few strides in the direction of the tomb. She lowered her head and held her hands out, palms forward. Her hands began to tremble, the shudder working its way through the whole of her body. She spun back toward them, wrapping her arms around herself. “Let’s do keep this to ourselves. For now, at least.” Fleur pinned her with her gaze until Evangeline answered with a nod. “Hugo?” Fleur said in a commanding voice.

  “Sure,” he said, though he sounded anything but certain. “Whatever you say, Tatie dearest.”

  “Good,” Fleur said, turning on her heel. “We should get back to the others now.” She began walking away, then stopped to look back at Hugo. “Be a gentleman for once and escort Evangeline, won’t you?”

  Fleur carried on before them as Hugo made an exaggerated show of bowing, then offering her his arm. “Madame.”

  Evangeline wrapped her arm through his, but held him back. “How could you know for sure? That I wouldn’t hurt you? I wasn’t in control. Not by a far cry.”

  “Simple. I knew I was safe, because I know you.” He patted her arm. “Come on, crow girl. Don’t want to keep the buzzards waiting.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Fleur had come home from her confrontation with Alcide to find the Twins waiting for her, holding a garishly ornate yet official summons. A summons to the trial of the father she’d returned to New Orleans to bury.

  Now she was back in the same cemetery where she’d participated in Celestin’s entombment, doing her best to maintain the appearance of sangfroid, even though she was shaking apart on the inside. Fleur kept reaching out for an arm that wasn’t there. Eli lacked either the stomach to face this farce or the heart to face her. She hoped it was the former, feared it was the latter, but would survive either way.

  It was long past time to learn to stand on her own anyway.

  It tormented her to know she’d come so close to a permanent, or at least near-permanent solution, only to see it snatched away. If she could’ve gotten her hands on Celestin, she would have stuffed the bastard’s conscious corpse into the same priest hole where he’d hidden Vincent’s body. Just desserts if ever just desserts had been served. She could’ve kept him whole, with his despicable psyche sealed up tight in his body. She could’ve plugged the spell that protected Lucy directly into that current, and Lucy might have been able to live out a full life, without ever knowing what her mother had done for her.

  Still, Fleur couldn’t find even an ounce of anger against the woman who’d stolen this chance. Evangeline Caissy was a good, kind person—good enough and kind enough to want to save Fleur from herself. But Evangeline was a babe in the woods when it came to magic. If Evangeline understood anything about resurrection spells, she would know that it was already far too late to save Fleur.

  But what was done was done. One part of Fleur’s mind now busied itself with calculating her next best move. Another part, perhaps even the part Evangeline had hoped to save, hid its eyes as Fleur prepared to take part in the desecration of her father’s body. A third justified her actions. If Fleur could walk out of here with a powerful enough relic, she could buy herself and Lucy time. A lot of time. The right relic, maybe decades. Fleur was prepared to fight for the center of Celestin’s consciousness. She’d walk away with his head or die trying.

  Today had already started off badly, and after one hell of a night. Now she had to parse Evangeline’s latest discovery. As she passed the row of the guardian’s tomb, she stopped for a moment to study it from what she hoped was a safe distance. The entity Evangeline had sensed was not the familiar genius loci of Précieux Sang Cemetery. No, this new spirit must have devoured the cemetery’s guardian. That there existed an unknown, formidable, and undoubtedly malevolent personage capable of delivering Celestin into Evangeline’s hands was a disquieting enough proposition, but now, an even more unsettling concern began to take root in her thoughts. If Evangeline was correct that this being was one of the shadows poor Daniel had spoken of, how had a creature of the Dreaming Road found its way into the common world? Had it piggybacked a ride with Alice? That would be better than what Fleur feared.

  Unable to rely on either Lisette or Daniel for guidance on the seven gates, Fleur had made a desperate move—she’d turned the research over to Lucy, whom she’d left safe at home. She’d hoped it would help keep Lucy occupied with something other than her ongoing, single-sided argument with an absent Remy. No such luck. Lucy returned with a quick, if cursory, report conveyed, in typical teenager fashion, over a series of texts: Gates of Guinee. Portals to the underworld—or whatever. Seven. Scattered around NOLA. Probably in cemeteries, because dead. Right?

  The empty tomb with the gaping hole. Fleur remembered her parents pointing it out to her thirty years ago. From her current vantage point, it appeared unchanged, though those around it had weathered despite preservation efforts. Could one of the gates be here in Précieux Sang? Could the guardian of the cemetery have been here to protect it? If the guardian had been bested, what did that mean for the gate?

  That would be a concern for later. One disaster at a time. She’d get through this, get what she needed, and then it would be time to dig deeper.

  Hugo and Evangeline drew up beside her. Ahead of them lay a sea of avaricious eyes that Fleur could almost imagine glinting red in the dying light. “We’ll forgo the ordeal.” She nodded toward the tomb. “My instincts tell me that whatever has set up housekeeping in there will bite off anything put through the opening.”

  “Fine by me,” Evangeline
said, glancing at the tomb. She then dashed past the row, dragging a straggling Hugo forward. Fleur followed a few feet behind them.

  As Fleur drew closer to the congregants, she began to pick up on grumblings and random bits of mumbled conversation.

  “Still swanning about, like their time is more valuable than ours.”

  “Like they’re some kind of royalty.”

  That, Fleur felt, was unfair. No family had ever faced such a shame in the history of New Orleans magic. She and Hugo had come forward, agreeing to speak out against Celestin’s crimes, to air every last bit of Marin dirty laundry if necessary. The least these people could do in return was let them take their time.

  “Ask me, all the Marins should have to stand. They’re all guilty. One way or another.” Fleur feared there was more than a grain of truth to this.

  The gathering fell silent as they drew near.

  Nicholas should be here. He could put a stop to this. Interesting. This thought had reached her not through her ears, but as a direct touch to her mind. She traced the thought to its origin, though she should have guessed. The Twins, dressed in identical gray jumpsuits, stood at the center of the gathering, one at the head of the bier that held Celestin, the other at its foot. Celestin had always referred to the pair as les Fidèles, and he’d been right to do so. They’d be Marin loyalists to the end, even if alliances within the family shifted daily. They’d come into the Chanticleer Coven under Nicholas, the usurper. Still, they honored the dethroned Celestin. Such devotion must be exhausting. Fleur realized she hadn’t picked up on their thought at random. They’d projected it to her.

  They were right on both counts. Nicholas should be here, and he could probably stop this trial from happening. Even as the deposed head of the vestigial Chanticleer Coven, Nicholas still held influence in this community. That was the exact reason Fleur hadn’t alerted him, claiming she was having more trouble connecting with him than she’d thought she would—the same lie she’d told the police when she’d gone to ID Astrid’s body.