by J. D. Horn
“You believe Alice saw her father murder Luc.”
Evangeline’s heart skipped at the words. She began nodding. She felt numb, but her numbness had nothing to do with Marceline’s intervention. It came with the knowledge she’d been giving herself to the man who’d killed Luc. For years. She had allowed herself to love Luc’s killer. “Yes. But she couldn’t stand it, so her mind told her she saw Babau Jean do it.”
“Perhaps the mask and the true identity are one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps her father and Babau Jean are one, or are at least in the process of becoming one.”
Evangeline shook her head. She was in no mood for puzzles right now. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
Marceline smiled. “I planted a seed,” she said and glanced around the room, seemingly searching for something. “In your pet’s mind.” Marceline’s focus sharpened. “Not an easy act. She is a willful creature.”
“Daniel,” Evangeline said. “You made her remember Daniel.” She’d already guessed as much. It had felt too convenient for the cat to suddenly remember her old foe on the heels of the sisters’ visit.
“Guilty as charged,” she said and purred, an imitation accurate enough to bring Sugar to the door. The cat took one look at Marceline and yowled, casting a warning glance at Evangeline, then tore back into the kitchen. “Guilty,” Marceline said, “even where I haven’t been charged.”
Marceline rose and went to a nightstand, tugging open the drawer and tossing out its contents—a collection of letters, including an unused recommendation from a professor for a graduate school application. She fished out a strip of photo booth snapshots of Evangeline’s parents—her sole inheritance from them aside from the talisman and her own flesh and blood. Marceline had known exactly where to find the strip, almost as if she’d seen it there before. Evangeline felt her skin crawl at the thought that this creature might have come in secret, her presence veiled even from Sugar, to riffle through her private affairs. Marceline regarded the pictures, her disgust evident. She held the photos up, seeming to compare the two faces to Evangeline’s own. “Too much him,” she said.
“Why Daniel?” Evangeline said, doing her best to maintain focus.
Marceline dropped the photo carelessly back into the drawer. “Can you really not hear it? The Book of the Unwinding calling?”
“What does your book have to do with Daniel?” Evangeline insisted.
“He showed you The Lesser Key,” she said. “Don’t try to dissimulate. I can smell it on you.”
“Yes. He showed me. How did you know he even had access to it?”
“The Lesser Key resonates along with its master, The Book of the Unwinding. Theodosius’s lesser work explains how to earn the greater. I know where every single extant copy of The Lesser Key is. Every single one.”
Her expression turned beatific, a saint of the darkness. “Your Daniel, he has the mark, does he not? The mark of The Lesser Key?”
Evangeline held her tongue, but Marceline seemed to intuit the truth. “He was created to walk between worlds. To open a lock that couldn’t be opened solely from either side. Your Nicholas created him . . . or rather he made his wife create him. So he could wear him. Like an envelope. No”—she held up her hand—“like a diving suit.” She nodded at her own simile. “Man joined to spirit. The only way to travel to the underworld and return.”
“The underworld?”
Marceline looked at Evangeline as if she were a natural-born fool. “What do you think lies at the other end of the Dreaming Road, ma chérie? The underworld, the afterworld, the great beyond.” Her eyes flashed with humor. “Perhaps even the Elysian Fields.” She laughed. “Oh, ma fille, it was no coincidence that the Book brought itself to New Orleans. The Book called out to the world, and the Crescent City bent its spine like a willing lover to receive it. Why do you think death is so ever-present here?
“It was all anticipated. It was all foreseen. The prophecies of the twilight of magic, the ascendance of The Book of the Unwinding. In the final days of magic, the hiding of the Book between worlds.” She held out her hands as if she were handing something precious to Evangeline, beseeching her to hear, to believe. “The Book,” she said, “has been waiting. Waiting so long for its time.”
“And Nicholas?” Evangeline asked, returning to the matter central to her own heart.
“Nicholas, he knew of the prophecies. He believed . . . believes himself to be the inheritor of the last breath of magic.”
Evangeline shook her head.
“The final breath of magic will issue from the Book itself. The witch who holds the last bit of magic will determine what comes next. I believe your Nicholas plans to mold magic in his own image. But to do so, he’ll have to make a couple of sacrifices.”
“Sacrifices?”
“The girl Alice. The boy Hugo.” She looked at Evangeline with something that came close to sympathy, as if she couldn’t muster true sympathy, but cared enough to counterfeit the real thing. “Luc has already been disposed of, but the King of Bones and Ashes, my dear, must be entirely without progeny.”
Evangeline’s mind flashed to the image at the center of The Lesser Key. The King of Bones and Ashes. The Queen of Heaven. Inanna and Damuzi.
“Astrid loved her children,” Marceline continued. “She never wanted to be Nicholas’s queen, so she escaped the only way she knew how. She took to the Dreaming Road. She left him with Daniel, a hobbled knight, and deprived him of his queen.
“I believe Nicholas found Babau Jean while he was searching the Dreaming Road for Astrid. Your Daniel is a well-mannered parlor trick, but Babau Jean is perhaps the strongest servitor spirit ever created. A far better vessel than anything Astrid, powerful witch that she was, could have created. I believe your Nicholas latched onto Babau Jean. But he still needs his Inanna. His queen. A strong, beautiful witch, capable of both darkness and light, to pull him back from the beyond.” She traced a cold finger down Evangeline’s cheek.
“You must realize Luc’s death wasn’t about punishing him.” Marceline dropped her hand to her side. “Not entirely. Nor was it only about removing an obstacle between himself and the Book. No, ma chérie, it was about Nicholas claiming you as his new queen.”
Evangeline felt cold and hot at the same time, her own heart turning toward murder. She grasped the chain in her clenched fist, reassuring herself—no, this fate, being broken, powerless, would be a much more satisfying punishment.
“As long as his children live, he can’t get his hands on the Book,” Marceline said. “We told you that Alice was important to someone important to us. You, ma jolie, are the one to whom she is important.”
“But Alice isn’t his daughter. Not really.”
An amused glimmer rose in Marceline’s eye. “Nicholas told you that?”
Evangeline nodded, though Marceline’s tone had already set her to doubting.
“And you believed him, did you?” Marceline tapped the side of her nose. “Seems to me that a man capable of murdering one child would have no trouble denying another—if it suited his purposes to do so.”
Marceline cast a look back down at the photos from the drawer. She smiled. “You say you’re nothing like your father.” Evangeline watched as Marceline fell away, transforming once again into avian form. “But your father,” she said, taking wing, “he used the necklace for revenge, too.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Today was Vèvè’s not quite so grand reopening, but tomorrow was St. John’s Eve, and in keeping with her mother’s practice, Lisette would close the shop for the holiday. Anyone serious about Voodoo would be getting together for a drumming, or maybe gathering—clad all in white—over by Magnolia Bridge for a head washing. Even those folk who didn’t partake in public ceremonies would be home making offerings of cigars or candy and white rum on an altar dedicated to the Widow Paris. Lisette hated to lose out on the tourist trade, but it was her mother’s way.
Lisette had kept the shop open late, as she always did the day before the holiday. She did so to allow extra time for true believers, most Lisette’s parents’ age, to come together and reminisce. Even last year, a number of them had claimed to remember congregating by bonfires on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain where it meets the Bayou St. John, a mathematical improbability if not an outright impossibility, even for those with the grayest hair. Lisette had listened and smiled as she always did when the old folk spoke of old times, les temps jadis. Not challenging the veracity of these cherished memories was a little lagniappe she offered these elderly clients.
This year the longer hours served a more mercenary purpose—she hoped to bring in a few extra dollars to help cover the insurance deductible. Maybe catch up a bit on tomorrow’s loss.
Isadore had wanted to come keep an eye on things, keep an eye on her, but she had refused. He had two days of work to catch up on, and the late twilight would give him and Remy a chance to finish some jobs he’d let slide. Lisette would be all right—had to be all right—on her own. If not, she was letting the Aryan-wannabe bastard win. Still, Lisette had not argued when Isadore insisted he’d come by to pick her up at ten.
Manon had offered to find someone to fill in for her at the hotel, claiming Lisette might need extra help on the register, but her daughter had already missed out on one night of wages this week. She’d said no. Besides, she knew what had motivated the offer. Manon had been studying Krav Maga, and Lisette knew her daughter was just itching to give the son of a bitch who had wrecked the shop a taste of what she’d been learning. She reminded Manon, just to show her that she wasn’t fooling anyone, that it was unlikely the vandal would return so soon. If he planned to come back for another go, he’d wait till the repairs were further along.
In the end, it didn’t matter that Lisette had been left there alone. Holiday or no, Vèvè had hardly been overwhelmed with business. In fact, this year, not a soul had ventured in. She’d given up an hour ago, flipping the “Ouvert” sign over to “Fermé” and turning the lock. It looked like none of the old folk had any interest in coming out, preferring their slippers and the glow of a television screen to reminiscing about dancing by firelight.
Or maybe they had just moved beyond what Vèvè had to offer.
Love. Success. Sexual prowess. The things Lisette promised to sell were a young person’s dreams. Maybe the old guard, feeling the aches in their bones and lint in their pockets, had figured out that they weren’t going to get much further in life than they already had, no matter how many candles they lit. Maybe they’d lost faith, too—or they’d realized that she had.
Or perhaps in spite of the large “We’re Open during Repairs” sign Remy had spray painted this morning, they’d been put off by the plywood covering the windows and the whole of the door except for a six-by-three-inch spy hole. A damned masterpiece the sign was, a testament to the indifference of the Ghede loa to both the slings and arrows of life and the crowbar of some cowardly white supremacist. Maman Brigitte herself stood in its center, swallowing shards of the broken vèvè windowpanes Remy had rescued from the garbage bin and incorporated into his art. Manon, who rarely praised her little brother to his face—gotta keep the little prince humble, she always said—had wrapped her arms around him as she stood there taking his work in.
“You’re going to be somebody,” she had said.
“Already am,” he’d answered with mock affront.
“Yes, you are,” Manon had said, and planted a kiss on his cheek. Seeing the two of them like that, bending but not breaking, had convinced Lisette that no matter how loud people got, how nasty, her family would survive. Hell, they would thrive.
Lisette looked around the now quiet shop. “You saw them, didn’t you, Mama?” She scanned the dim corners, pricked up her ears. Waiting. Hoping. “You saw them, your grandbabies pulling together to get this place back in shape.” She stood, stock still. No response came.
The door rattled, causing Lisette to startle.
She cast a glance at the clock. It had just gone nine. Maybe Remy’s assistance had helped his dad catch up quicker, or perhaps Manon had slipped out from the hotel on her break? She stood, intending to investigate, but then the fear slipped in. What if the man who’d done this—the vandal who’d desecrated the altar built by her mother’s hands, who wanted to erase her and her family from this country, if not from the whole damned world—what if he’d returned?
There was a loud rap on the door. Did criminals knock? She eased her way out from behind the counter and took two quick steps toward the door. She slowed as the lights dimmed once, twice, then returned to normal. The knock was repeated with greater insistence.
“Coming,” she called, wondering if there had been a power surge.
Reaching the door, she stationed herself to the side of the spy hole and lifted up on her toes to peek through the hole Isadore had cut, two inches too high, in the plywood. The eyes peering back at her through the gathering shadows were the last she’d expected to see. She rolled back on her heels, wondering if it were possible to pretend she wasn’t in.
“Lisette,” a voice she hadn’t even heard in over a decade called through the slight opening. “It’s me. Vincent. Vincent Marin,” he added, as if it were necessary. As if she wouldn’t recognize the man she had come so close to marrying unless he mentioned the family name that had almost been her own. “Can I come in? Talk with you a bit?”
For a moment her mouth went dry. She didn’t need him here. Certainly not now. She sure as hell didn’t need Isadore finding them here together. Her husband didn’t have a jealous bone in his body, except when it came to this man. She considered telling Vincent the shop was closed. That he’d have to come back. Then she realized just how stupid she’d feel turning him away. She cast another glance at the clock. Better to hear him out—and then get him out.
“Just a moment,” she said, reaching to open the lock. She heard the click, then stepped back, pushing the door out. Vincent’s hand reached in, tugging the door to him. He stood there on the threshold, a strip of rose sky darkened overhead, the building opposite in shadow.
“I’m real sorry about Celestin,” she said, blocking his way.
His lips curled into a smile. “Well, Alcide sure wasn’t.”
There was a pause. Too long to pretend she wasn’t thrown by the nearness of him. This was the closest she’d been to him since the night she’d sent him away, more than two decades before.
Vincent’s face had filled out, and laugh lines had long since become permanent creases. His curly black hair, now cropped short, had gone salt and pepper. But none of these changes came as a surprise. She had spent twenty years now scrutinizing photos of him on the society page or accompanying news stories about his construction company, cataloging all the ways in which he’d changed. She felt a sinking feeling that he, too, was probably examining her, comparing some idealized version of her to the woman she’d slowed and thickened into.
She’d aged. Hell, they both had.
But he was as handsome as ever. And he wasn’t just some inky newsprint or computer glare now—he was here in the flesh, and that made a difference. She felt the blood rise to her cheeks, remembering some temps jadis of her own.
“Yeah. About that,” she said, finding her voice, forcing those memories back into the past. She loved her husband. And she was enough of a realist to know she no longer loved Vincent. She no longer even knew him. Not really. What she loved was the memory of the two of them, young and together. She loved the memory of herself at twenty. “I’m sorry about that, too. I should’ve done more to stop him. I know . . .”
Her mind flashed on her father’s silver horn. How much did Vincent understand about her father’s intentions?
Vincent held up his hands, shook his head. “No need to apologize. I’m not here for that. Besides, I think Alcide’s blues solo might’ve helped him bury some of the old animosity. And that’s a good thing.” His eyes twinkled. “’Cause I
’m not sure our families are quite through with each other yet.”
Lisette shook her head, confused.
“I took a little ferry ride today with your son and his date.”
“Date?”
“Fleur’s daughter, Lucy. You should’ve seen the way Remy was looking at my niece,” Vincent said. “And the way she was looking right back. Seems like history is about to repeat itself.”
History. A poor choice of words, she thought. The story of their families was not one she’d care to hear retold. “I, I,” Lisette stuttered. “Remy didn’t mention . . .”
“A young man didn’t tell his mother he’s been sprung by a pretty girl?” Vincent said. “Imagine that.” He smiled again. A big, warm smile that promised her things between them were all right. That maybe even the whole damned world was all right. “May I?” he said, and only then did Lisette realize she hadn’t yet allowed him to enter.
She returned his smile. “Yes. Of course.” She stepped back, giving him room to pass her.
He hadn’t ventured inside since before her mother’s death. She gave him a chance to take it all in, allow the ghost of how it used to be fade into her slapped-together attempt at recovery. She cast a guilty glance at the sad altar she’d set up for Erzulie, an old card table she’d pulled from her garage and covered with a cheap pink sateen sheet. She’d stopped off at the convenience store on her way in and picked up a plastic-sheathed bouquet of drooping pink roses and a six-pack of pink frosted mini-cupcakes, two of which had served as her breakfast. A couple of white candles she kept beneath the counter in case of a power outage completed the offering. It was a lazy offering, but then again, Erzulie was a lazy loa.