The Book of the Unwinding

by J. D. Horn

  In truth, Fleur couldn’t take the chance that he might choose to stop the trial. Nicholas might find a different solution to her problem, and then again, he might not. Maybe Nathalie would be able to put a bandage on the issue, or maybe she’d refuse once she understood what Fleur had done to bring Lucy back. With some things, Fleur was willing to take calculated risks, but not with Lucy’s life. Besides, what she wanted to take from Celestin, a loving grandfather would have offered of his own free will. Celestin had never given anyone anything for free.

  She scanned the faces of those staring at her. Each stepped back as they felt the weight of her gaze land on them. Just as she’d suggested to Evangeline, a third of the people awaiting the proceedings had no business being here. The young fellow outside the gate, reed thin and half spooked, was no kind of sergeant-at-arms. If the Great Wall of Jeanette, as Hugo had called their former sergeant-at-arms, were still alive, these pretenders would’ve never made it past the gate, but Jeanette was one of the fallen . . . no, one of those who’d been slaughtered by Celestin’s hand.

  With an impotent boy in the role of enforcer, it looked like it was up to Fleur to handle things. A task that had become more difficult now that they could not use the usual test. The first step would be to eliminate competition. She’d long ago mastered the use of soft influence to get people to perform as she desired, but soft influence took time. Good thing she’d also perfected her strong-arm twist.

  Stalk the herd. Take out the weakest first. Spook the rest, and let them peel off on their own.

  Her eyes fell on two young women who looked to be no more than a year or two older than Lucy, their hair dyed in an amateur violet and magenta ombre. Black lipstick. Too much eyeliner, and black peacoats over black T-shirts and ripped jeans. A pound each of silver jewelry on them, and not an ounce of real witch between them. How had they even learned of this gathering?

  Fleur decided to start with these two, the easiest marks, then pick her way through the others who lacked standing. As she approached them, she caught wind of lavender, heavy-handed patchouli, and, bless them, mugwort—the ingredients of the basic protection oil with which they’d anointed themselves. Fleur couldn’t help but smile at their naiveté, thinking that their homemade perfume could protect them even from the degraded, some close to toothless, real witches gathered there. She pushed through to them. “The gentleman at the gate will let you out.”

  “Nicholas Marin sent us,” the shorter of the two said with bravado, then puffed up with satisfaction like she’d uttered her first successful banishing incantation.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Fleur said, unable to repress a laugh. The girls’ attempt at chicanery was the first amusement Fleur had enjoyed in weeks. The very thought that Nicholas would even notice these two, let alone deputize them. “Leave.”

  They regarded each other, and Fleur knew they were contemplating standing up to her. On any given day, Fleur loved encountering strong, determined young women, even a brash duo like these two. This, however, was far from one of those given days. “Go,” she commanded. “I won’t repeat myself.” She lifted her hand and let the tiniest of sparks—channeled static electricity—shoot at them. No chance it could harm them, but it had the desired effect nonetheless. The taller girl, the shakier of the two, grabbed the other’s arm and dragged her toward the gate.

  “Open it for them,” Fleur called out to the gutless sergeant-at-arms, but he didn’t make a move. He was craning his neck, gaping down the road at something the stone wall prevented Fleur from seeing. He gave a comedic yelp and stumbled backward. Fleur sensed he was about to abandon his post, and sure enough, he darted away in the opposite direction of whatever had given him a fright.

  “Hugo,” Fleur called and motioned for him to join her at the gate. Evangeline grasped his arm, trying to hold him back, but he patted her hand, signaling for her to release him. Instead, she went ahead of him, grasping his hand in hers.

  A grating, clanging sound rang out from every corner of the park.

  Fleur turned her face toward the guardian’s tomb, then realized it stood silent. The assault came from outside. The bars of the cemetery’s eastern gate were bending, the lock snapping as the gate’s sides curled back.

  The witches crowded together in the cemetery’s center, unintentionally forming a protective barrier around the very man they’d come to prosecute. Irony one. Irony two—the young women Fleur had tried to intimidate into leaving now clung to her for protection, preventing her from reaching the gate. Poor fools mistook her for the most powerful witch there. Not even in the top twelve, not with nearly every volt of power she had dedicated to Lucy. If Fleur could’ve passed the pair on to Evangeline, she would have, but Evangeline and Hugo stood frozen by the growing hole in the eastern wall. Fleur wrapped an arm around each quivering girl.

  The witches, the real witches, might or might not be able to fend for themselves, but her Goth duo didn’t stand a chance. She turned the girls toward the western gate, hoping to escort them to safety, but on the far side of the long allée that bisected the cemetery, the western gate, too, was shaking, snapping, and curling backward. The sound of straining and breaking bars echoing off the tombs testified that the northern and southern gates were also falling.

  Fleur realized she’d have to choose. She could transport the girls away from here. Not far enough to guarantee their safety, perhaps, but far enough to give them a fighting chance. Still, doing so might mean she’d lose her chance to save her own girl. A hand on her back. She looked over her shoulder to find that the Twins had deserted Celestin and come to her defense. Nice to know she rated higher in their eyes than her murderous father. “Here,” she said, shoving the sniveling duo at them. “One for each of you.” She was on the verge of ordering the Twins to keep the girls safe, but perhaps that wouldn’t be possible. She couldn’t get a clear read on the assaulting force, though the strands of its power seemed to intertwine with those of Précieux Sang’s new resident. The two were perhaps related in source, though intuition told Fleur they weren’t the same. She couldn’t be certain. The only thing clear to her was that whatever was coming was big and full of power, more power than she’d ever encountered before. “Do what you can,” she called to the Twins, and sent them back toward the cringing circle that surrounded Celestin. Fleur ran to Hugo’s side, amazed to see there was no fear in his eyes. He was beaming with pride, and Evangeline stood beside him, stunned with wonder.

  Alice appeared before the open gates, her unshod feet hovering above the ground. A crackling cloud of silver lightning encircled her.

  Horrifying. Glorious. The two words chimed in unison in Fleur’s mind. Fleur blinked, unable to believe her eyes as the woman she’d long believed to be her niece stepped down to the earth as if she were descending an ordinary set of stairs.

  “Now that’s how to make an entrance, little sis,” Hugo said, but Alice allowed him only a casual glance as she passed.

  Fleur struggled to find her voice. “Alice, dear,” she finally choked out. “I thought we’d agreed that you shouldn’t be party to this. Not after all you’ve been through. Let us handle this.”

  “I changed my mind,” Alice said, the words coming out in a discordant singsong.

  “Please,” Fleur said, nodding at Hugo. “Let your brother take you home.” Alice continued, passing through Fleur’s words as if she hadn’t even heard them. Or perhaps they were simply of no consequence to her. “Lucy will be out of her mind with worry when she discovers you’re missing.”

  “Lucy will be fine,” Alice said without looking at her, answering a worry Fleur hadn’t yet allowed herself to acknowledge. “Everyone here will be fine,” she said, her voice cold, distant. “As long as they stay out of my way.”

  Alice stopped by the Twins and focused on the wards Fleur had given them. “You don’t want this,” Alice said, addressing the young women. “You don’t want any of this.” Alice glanced back at the wreckage she’d made of the gate. “Two blocks sout
h. You’ll encounter a woman waiting in a black SUV. Tell her I said to take you home. Tell her I don’t need saving. Not anymore. No matter what she thinks she knows about me.” In a flash, the young women were suddenly standing outside the cemetery on the far side of the gate’s twisted remains, staring in at them with wide, shocked eyes. “Tell them to leave, Hugo.”

  Hugo lunged at the opening. “Boo.” The pair grasped each other’s hands like schoolgirls and took off running. The cemetery went so silent Fleur’s ears could follow the sound of the girls’ receding footfalls to the end of the block.

  With a wave of her hand, Alice parted the crowd, leaving her a clear path to where Celestin lay. “Bring me the blade,” she commanded.

  No one moved. No one spoke. Still, a psychic clamor rose up from the crowd—even from those who’d come determined to find Celestin worthy of punishment.

  “The Caissy woman hasn’t even taken first oath,” Mitch, the great lemming-in-chief, challenged Alice. Mitch considered himself a leader, which was only true if you considered leadership to be following the sentiment of the majority.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said without even looking at him. “Celestin is guilty.”

  “It is necessary,” Mitch responded, coming forward, all the while taking a silent survey to make sure he’d have backup. “It’s procedure. This community needs healing. We deserve our chance to air our grievances against this man.”

  Alice turned to him and laughed. “To hell with your grievances and procedure. Your procedure is nothing more than a way for you to absolve your conscience. To claim that justice has been done, even though you have no intention of leaving here without a scrap of Celestin’s flesh. I have no need of that.”

  “We all have suffered at your grandfather’s hands—”

  “Father,” Alice said, the fire in her voice having been exchanged for cold steel. “Celestin was my father.”

  A wave of shocked whispers rippled through the ensemble.

  Alice looked the crowd over. “It’s true. Some of you have suffered great loss because of Celestin. But you,” she said, focusing on Mitch as her lip curled up in disgust. “Your great wound is nothing more than a paper cut. For you, this is no more than a bit of theater and a chance to walk away with a prize.” She raised her right hand, and a sound like a gong rang out from every direction. The hilt of the athame their community had consecrated for the collection of relics shot into her hand. “Stop playing the victim, Mitch. And stop playing the hero, too.” She held the knife up before her eyes and blew on it, her breath creating a discordant whistle as blade split air. She lifted the athame with both hands over her head, the point of the blade aimed at Celestin’s chest. “What’ll it be? Light or dark?”

  “Let me do it.” Evangeline rushed forward and laid a hand on Alice’s shoulder. Alice hesitated, lowering the blade and resting it on the bier beside Celestin. “I don’t mind,” Evangeline said as Alice turned to face her. “What does it matter, really? Let’s give them their damned pomp and circumstance, but don’t take this all on yourself. You’ve been through so much.” Evangeline dared to lay her hand on Alice’s cheek. “We’ll break the bond on him first, though, okay?” she said, nodding in encouragement. “I know he’s a miserable bastard, sweetie, and he deserves the worst kind of punishment, but let’s send him on. Let a greater power than us be his judge.”

  Alice’s gaze softened, causing Fleur to feel a twinge of panic. Evangeline was right—Alice should not be the one to wield the athame—but what if she convinced Alice to release Celestin? If the bond connecting him to his body were broken, Fleur would leave here not much better than empty-handed.

  “It’s only,” Evangeline continued, “I’ve done things in the heat of anger, things I’m not proud of, and I’m afraid you may not be thinking clearly right now. That when you get back to yourself, you may regret having done this.”

  For a moment Fleur thought Alice might fall into Evangeline’s arms, but Alice stiffened, and her eyes lost the fleeting spark of warmth Evangeline’s touch had brought to them. “There is no me for me to go back to. Celestin saw to that.” Alice’s eyes flitted around the crowd as if she were searching out a particular face. Nicholas, no doubt—her ever-absent, putative father. “Nicholas, too, in his own way.”

  Fleur knew the shortest line between herself and what she needed was Alice’s rage. She should keep still, let Alice do what she seemed determined to do, but guilt, stone by stone, pressed on Fleur’s heart, crushing her. She struggled to catch her breath. “And I did too, in my own way,” she said, coming forward. Alice’s eyes darted to her. “Through willful ignorance.” Fleur drew closer. She could feel the air around Alice vibrating from a good six feet away. “Through inaction. Through being so caught up in my own life that I never gave my little sister more than a passing thought. Celestin’s actions were monstrous. You may rightly find Nicholas’s abandonment unforgivable. But I’m just as guilty of abandoning you. While I told myself Nicholas was seeing to it that you got the care you needed, I never once came to make sure of that. If I had, I might’ve realized you didn’t belong in that institution. Saying I’m sorry could never even begin to make up for the ways I’ve let you down.”

  “Maybe not,” Alice said, her expression impassive. “Though pulling me out of hell was a very good place to start.” Alice turned away from her and grasped the athame. “You were saying, Mitch, that you’ve suffered at my father’s hands?”

  He coughed, already having slipped back into the ensemble. “Yes,” he said. Then, with more surety, “Yes. We all have to some degree, even if you choose to belittle the pain of some.”

  Alice made two quick slices with the blade, severing Celestin’s hands from his body. Fleur choked back bile, realizing that there was no going back now. Even though she, too, wanted this, her father’s psyche would now be trapped in his dismembered body for years, for decades, perhaps even until the end of magic. What was done to any part of him would be felt throughout the whole of him.

  “Here.” Alice snapped up Celestin’s right hand in her left and flung it at Mitch, who fell back, afraid, then darted forward to claim his bounty before the others could reach it. Alice took hold of his left hand and tossed it up into the air, where it burst into flame. The fire burned until his flesh and bone had both disintegrated into an ash that a conjured wind caught and scattered, coating all present with the residue. “No more hands,” Alice said, her voice sounding so much like it had when she was a tiny girl, “no more suffering.” She held the hilt of the blade out to Fleur. “Take what you need,” she said, speaking up over the growing rumblings about Alice’s waste of a fine relic. Alice’s eyes locked with her own. For Lucy. These words had been sent silently, and Fleur sensed Alice had even encrypted the message so that no one else could hear.

  Fleur accepted the knife, but turned to watch as this stranger, her sister, passed—this time without the aid of magic—through the gates to which she’d laid waste.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Astrid’s physical form had died years ago by the standards of the common world, but eons ago by her own. Now she wore Babau Jean like a comfortable sweater, passing with ease between the Dreaming Road and the common world. She’d worried the transition would prove awkward, that her return to the common world would be greeted by a steep learning curve, but she found Jean well broken in, even happy to have a new inhabitant, a new master. The creature had spent years trying to buck his former rider, but unlike Celestin, Astrid had asked permission, not forced Jean to accept her.

  The creature possessed far greater physical strength than Astrid’s mortal body ever had, and his senses were far superior to those she’d known in normal life. Looking through the eyes of Babau Jean, she observed the world in an expanded spectrum of color, and from a greater vantage point that had nothing to do with his towering height. The shadows that had once flitted on the periphery now revealed themselves to her in full relief. The whispers that had once been incomprehensible
now chimed clearly in her mind.

  It pleased her to know that Jean was the sole creature of his type left in the common world. Once the starting gun had gone off, the race to capture The Book of the Unwinding had begun. Now that it had returned to the world, now that the world was ripe for it, The Lesser Key had been supplanted. When The Book of the Unwinding came into the world, every copy of The Lesser Key and every creature conjured with its magic had been made redundant, reduced to ash. Every creature, that was, other than Jean. Jean was now attuned to her magic, and as master of the Book, Astrid’s magic endured. He now counted as the last of his kind.

  Astrid watched in amusement as Rose danced around the living room of their commandeered house, unable to control her joy at Astrid’s homecoming. The old hag, once the most ancient crone in the Chanticleer Coven, had benefited from Celestin’s blunder, his inability to control Soulange Simeon and her pathetic daughter. The blood of the sacrificed witches had failed to raise a new body for Astrid, but Rose’s own bent, ancient body had been washed in the blood, baptized in it and renewed.

  Astrid hadn’t evicted Celestin from Jean out of revenge as much as out of necessity. Celestin had failed to provide her with a body to walk in this world, while he had a perfectly serviceable one at his command. And, of course, there was the matter of maintaining discipline. He’d failed her. She couldn’t let that go unpunished. What did it matter if Rose benefited from Celestin’s failure? Unlike that fool Demagnan, who, believing Astrid’s cause lost, had abandoned faith and turned her physical form into a grotesque plaything, Rose remained a good and faithful servant.