The King of Bones and Ashes

by J. D. Horn

  “The Beautiful Dreamer transformed into Babau Jean, the great and fearsome monster, the haunter of children’s dreams. I thought the discovery would terrify her. That she’d learn her lesson. Begin to settle down.” He raised his brows, as if to say such a reaction was the only rational one. “But no. La Belle et la Bête, Beauty and the Beast, it must have seemed to her.” He laughed.

  “The creature was more than a simple servitor spirit. It was the mask its creator wore to slip into dreams and feed on dreamers. I learned how to ride the creature, to put him on, to make myself one with him. It was the greatest of jokes, really. Your grandmother slipping around, hiding her indiscretions with such care, never knowing that behind the mask of her lover’s face was her own husband.

  “The next bit came as an accident. Paulina Picot was the first of the Chanticleer Coven to take to the Dreaming Road.” His gaze softened as he spoke of the witch. “She was a sad lot, our Paulina. Drab and as weak as water. Her place in the coven was hereditary, otherwise”—he made a motion like sweeping crumbs from a table—“pfff. Not one to miss at all, Paulina, but one day, she did go missing, and someone, I’m not sure who, did, in fact, take notice. It took a while, but a spell led us to her. She’d locked herself away in one of those self-storage facilities—rather amusing if you think about it.”

  Celestin paused, but Alice didn’t react. He waited. Smirked again. Then sighed. “Her body was there, dehydrated, dying. But she—her essence—was not. We took the body to the hospital. They put tubes down her throat, tubes up her . . . well, you get the picture. Her vacant form held on for a few days. As her coven leader,” he said, placing his hand over his heart, “I was terribly concerned for her well-being.” His words dripped with exaggerated sincerity. He leaned back and looked at her through mischievous, narrowed eyes. “That was the reason I gave for staying by her side, day and night. But I was really only curious to see if I could slip into the world she’d created for herself. It was a risk, of course,” he winked at her, “mais qui ne risque rien n’a rien. I wore the mask of Babau Jean, but to my surprise, she saw me as me. I realized that I was her dream. The love she’d given up on knowing. She gave herself to me, and I fed upon her magic as she aged—days, months, years even, all flashing by in what seemed to me to be mere moments. She changed from a drab, middle-aged mouse into a desiccated crone right in my arms, then fell to dust at my feet. I awoke at the sound of the monitor alarm. Paulina was dead. Dead in both her world and the common world. But I was alive. Alive and energized.”

  He smiled. “I began picking them off, the weaker witches who took to the Dreaming Road. Whenever I heard of a new witch ‘missing,’ I went hunting. At first, mostly the solitary ones or ones from smaller, weaker covens, but what can I say? I had the taste for Chanticleer. It became a game for me, spreading despondency among the weak. Planting the seed of the Dreaming Road in their minds. After a while, I found we had reached a tipping point, where it was no longer necessary for me to manipulate the others. Escape via the Dreaming Road had become a normalized concept.”

  “But I didn’t choose to come here. And neither did my mother.”

  “No, but as I’ve come to understand the Dreaming Road, I’ve learned there are a few tricks, a few”—he held up his hands and wiggled his fingers like he was about to perform a stage magician’s trick—“trapdoors, if you will, between this place and the common world. It takes a lot out of me, of course, but you . . . and Astrid . . . were worth it. No, it’s much easier when witches come of their own volition.”

  “But how could you find them, these witches?”

  “Here,” he said, sitting up straighter, seeming proud of himself, “is one of the great secrets of the Dreaming Road. All the worlds here seem so different, each built to delight its dreamer,” he said, emphasizing each word as if it were its own independent thought, “but they all exist within the same sphere.” He paused, Alice intuited, to give her time to consider the point. “And there’s only one spot around New Orleans where the Dreaming Road and the common world actually touch.”

  “Grunch Road,” Alice said, remembering, as a small girl, hearing coven members whisper its name. “Where Babau Jean . . . where I guess you killed Soulange, and tried to kill Grandmother.”

  “I’ll let you in on another secret. Really of no import to anyone other than our own acquaintances.” He winked. “Laure was already stark raving mad when I found her at the foot of the Dreaming Road.” He hesitated, pointing his index finger and pinkie toward an artificial heaven, making a devil’s oath. “And Soulange was dead. As dead as dead can be. No. I didn’t kill the woman. It was your grandmother who took her life. Part of a spell they used to keep The Book of the Unwinding out of my hands.”

  “But why would Grandmother care? Why would she try to stand between you and your precious book?”

  “Because to use the Book, to harness its magic, a man must be without progeny. Magic—the final magic—must fall into a pool without issue. Theodosius, the Book’s author—one could almost call him its progenitor—le salaud fou, made a few modifications I myself wouldn’t have been willing to undergo.” He grimaced while miming a tug and a slice. “No, much better to erase one’s mistakes than to break one’s pencil.”

  “Erase. You mean murder.”

  “‘Murder was the first act of magic,’” he said, something in his tone causing Alice to realize he considered this a truism. “That is why Laure wanted to keep the Book from me. She wanted to protect her children. Her bastard children she used me to sire.”

  “But they are your children.”

  “No,” he shook his head, regarding her with severity. “Not at all. They may be of my flesh, but they are not of my soul. No, I know that as Laure lay with me, in her mind, she was giving herself to Alcide. The children she bore, I detest.” Celestin made a face like he’d tasted something bitter. “Vincent. Un vrai fils à maman, that one, despite his robust nature. I was both relieved and amused when he brought Soulange and Alcide’s daughter home to meet his mother and me. No, that one was always his mother’s son. Right down to his taste in lovers.” A small smile came to his lips. “I enjoyed watching the boy die.” He nodded his head, as if trying to make his point. “Really, I did.”

  Vincent’s murder flashed before her eyes, as clearly as if Alice had been there to witness it herself. A moan escaped her, and the look on Celestin’s face told her that he realized he’d gone too far by sharing it with her. In that moment, she and Celestin both knew that Alice would always despise him.

  “I suspect Laure lied to Soulange,” he said, shifting gears. “The woman died without ever knowing the truth of Laure’s treachery, though I might decide to apprise her of it now that we’ve . . . reconnected.” He paused, seeming to consider the point. “I’ve often wondered if Laure simply miscalculated. She destroyed her son’s relationship with Alcide’s daughter, supposedly for his own good. She took the life—for the most noble of reasons, of course—of Alcide’s wife. She sensed my connection to the Book. I believe she might have thought that I, her husband, would be destroyed, or at least significantly weakened by its removal. No,” he said, “I can’t help but ask myself if it didn’t all boil down to Laure still having her hat set for Alcide.”

  He lifted his hand, waving it as if wiping away a stain. “But that’s neither here nor there. She died screaming after years of sharing her mind with someone so much more frightening than our Babau could ever be.” He patted her on the knee. “She believed herself to be strong. Believed she could somehow survive the madness she invited into her. But she spent the end of her days seeing the world through Theodosius’s eyes. I’m sure of it. The things she dreamed of . . . the nightmares she lived while awake.” He laughed. “She was trapped, staring into the darkness. But it was all her own doing. Suffice it to say that if Laure and Soulange hadn’t interfered in the manner they did, the Book would have been recovered, and you would’ve—”

  “Ended up here anyway.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, no, ma chère,” Celestin’s face pinched in on itself as he shook his head. “You would never have been born. I told you that you were made from love. I would have never let you come into the world had I not believed the Book was secured beyond my reach.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  He shook his head. “Not as well as Laure had hoped. A book hidden between two realities. She never realized that I and her phantom lover were one and the same. That together we formed a creature capable of channeling magic between realities.” He shrugged. Alice was surprised to see what looked to be genuine sadness in his eyes.

  “But the book wasn’t ‘secured.’ And I did,” she said, “come into the world.”

  “And that’s why I built you this paradise. You must forgive me. I’d intended it for your seven-year-old self, not the beautiful young woman you’ve become. If you’d just taken my hand when I came for you that first day, imagine all the suffering you might have saved yourself.”

  “You wanted to bring me here to live and die. In a dream.”

  “In a beautiful dream. A much better life than Nicholas has given you. Locked away on that icy little island. No, if you had come with me, you would’ve lived a full and wonderful life. Your every dream realized. Your every hope attained.”

  “And I would be dead.”

  “Yes, by now, you would’ve expired.”

  “And you would’ve fed from my magic.”

  “Yes. It would’ve been a waste not to.”

  His expression turned grave. “You’re better off here. You are. If you were to awaken, if you were to return to the rest of the family, they would only lock you away again. This time for good.”

  “Because they believe I’m guilty. Because they believe I’ve helped you.”

  “No, dear girl,” he said, shaking his head. “None of them would hold you responsible for what’s happened. They would lock you away because they believe you’re too fragile, yet too powerful, to live freely among them. Just like Astrid.” He shrugged. “Nicholas had planned to send your mother to that island of yours. And he would’ve, too, but I got to her first.”

  Alice wanted to rail against him, but she couldn’t. However much she didn’t agree with his decisions, however much she resented and hated the things he’d done, she believed his every word. “But I don’t understand. If you come and go along the Dreaming Road, if you can replenish your own magic by feeding off others, what is it to you if magic is fading? Why would you even care about that book?”

  “Oh, my dear girl, I don’t care about the Book. I never wanted the Book. Your grandmother and Soulange should never have tried to do away with it. It cannot be destroyed, and it refuses to stay hidden any longer, for its time has come. No, if Laure and Soulange wanted to save their children, if they wanted to postpone the end of magic, they should’ve killed me. The Book sensed the connection I’d forged with Babau Jean.” He reached out and took Alice’s hand, and she let him. “You see, I was never after The Book of the Unwinding. The Book was after me.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  The morning was hotter than hell, upper nineties already, and the humidity . . . well, at least the rain had finally stopped.

  Fourth of July. Jackson Square was teeming with children, their laughter and cries filling the air. Buskers competed for airwaves with the beats streaming from the open windows of passing cars. Evangeline turned, stepping out of the way of a trio of passing joggers, mad to be out in this heat.

  Bored tarot card readers and art merchants lined up one after the other along the St. Ann Street walk, tapping on their phone screens or flipping through worn paperbacks, looking up from time to time at passersby.

  As Evangeline drew near, a pair of dirty-pretty blond Cajun boys, brothers by the look of them, stopped the arcane French tune they were playing mid-note, then broke out in an old and very familiar Robbie Robertson song. She stopped and gave them an exaggerated curtsy as they sang out her name. She dug a couple of coins from her pocket to drop into the hat that sat on the ground before them, but the nearer man reached out and snatched the cap away, dropping it onto his head. He gave her a smile. Just a smile. Still . . . the look in his eyes, well, it had been a long time since Evangeline had blushed at anything, but she felt the color rising to her cheeks. She turned and began to walk away, but stopped and looked back over her shoulder at the fellow in the cap. “Sounds like you know where to find me,” she said, then turned and merged into a gaggle of tourists flooding into Decatur Street on their way to the Café Du Monde.

  She broke with her escort as they went straight to the beignets, and she turned right to find the stairs that would carry her up and over the artillery park. She paused on the platform by the cannon and let her gaze drift out across the strip of parking lots and train tracks to land on the muddy waters of the Mississippi. The river’s current, bending and weaving its way through disappearing shores, would soon be carrying Vincent Marin’s ashes along—out into the deep, warm waters of the Gulf. It had been Fleur’s daughter Lucy who’d followed a clue from his killer and found the body, wrapped in heavy plastic and hidden in an old priest hole built behind a false pilaster in Nicholas’s formal dining room. The family had declined Frank Demagnan’s offer to see to a “proper burial,” but he had his pale hands too busy dealing with the aftermath of the ball to put up much of a fuss.

  Although Evangeline had always liked Vincent, she might not have come out today if she’d thought Nicholas would be there. But Nicholas was gone. Just gone. He’d disappeared with such finality that if Evangeline didn’t know his ego was too big to allow it, she might have suspected that he, like his wife before him, had taken to the Dreaming Road. Though if what Evangeline had heard about the massacre was true, it looked like Astrid might have had a change of heart. That all the bloodshed was linked to her attempt to return.

  Maybe she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about Nicholas. Maybe she hadn’t. Either way, she knew there was no trust between them. Her mother’s cohorts were liars. But the thing about a good lie is that it always has a jigger of truth mixed in.

  She wasn’t the only one unsure about Nicholas and his motives. Some were whispering that Nicholas himself might have had something to do with Babau Jean’s murder party. Perhaps it had been an act of retaliation against not only the Chanticleer Coven, but against all the witches of New Orleans for having wounded his pride.

  Still, Evangeline could see another possible motive. Perhaps he, too, had experienced a change of heart toward Astrid. Perhaps Evangeline herself had helped push him in that direction.

  Others spoke more loudly, and Evangeline feared rightly, that Alice had triggered the monster’s arrival. Whether or not she had conjured him willingly was still a matter of conjecture, and probably always would be. Just as Celestin had done before her, Alice now lay in a vegetative state, in the very same facility up near Natchitoches that had cared for her grandfather. Though it was still early days, and a miracle could happen any day, the doctors hadn’t expressed much optimism that Alice would ever awaken. Evangeline hated it, but part of her felt it might be for the best if Alice could just slip away quietly in her sleep. It could save a lot of people a lot of pain if she did.

  There, at the end of the tiny pier that straddled the rocky shore and jutted out into the river, a figure stood waving at her. Hugo. He had his aunt and his cousin now. But somehow she knew he was still mostly hers—always would be. It was for Hugo, not Vincent’s memory, that she’d ventured to the river’s edge today. She raised her hand in salute, and descended the stairs.

  As she reached the foot of the stairs, a somehow familiar black SUV pulled alongside her, then slid into an empty space. The vehicle’s doors opened, and Fleur descended, the driver hopping out with her. “Let me help you with that,” the driver called to Lucy, who was riding in the back. “It sticks a bit sometimes.” The driver tugged the door open.

  “Thank you,” Lucy said, then slid out onto the asphalt on shoes tall enough to challenge even E
vangeline’s most accomplished dancer.

  Evangeline was about to greet the mother and daughter when the driver spun around. “Ms. Caissy,” she said, “so good to see you again.”

  It took Evangeline a moment, but her mind flashed back to her ride to Précieux Sang, precisely, she calculated on emotion alone, one hundred and forty years ago, next week. “Nathalie,” she said, then reached out to accept the woman’s hand. “How are you?”

  “Well, you know. Showing up. Diving in. Sticking at it,” she said and flashed a bright smile. “Right?”

  Evangeline nodded and squeezed Nathalie’s hand. “Right. But please call me Evangeline.”

  Nathalie nodded, placing a hand over heart and giving a slight bow of her head. This girl, Evangeline decided, was a piece of work. If she could handle her liquor, Evangeline might have just found her new best friend.

  “Evangeline,” Fleur said, “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Ah, wait,” Nathalie said, beaming, “y’all know each other?” At that moment, she seemed to remember something. She turned back to Evangeline. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

  Vincent wasn’t her loss, not really, but his death was at least tangential to so many of the personal losses she had faced. “Thank you,” Evangeline said, even though the words came out sounding like an awkward question.

  Nathalie looked up, peering over Evangeline’s shoulder, and a look of surprise bloomed on her face. Evangeline turned to see Lisette Perrault and her family approaching. There was something different about the woman now. She was glowing, if not with confidence, at least with a sense of rightness. She no longer seemed to consider herself a fraud. An older man she recognized as Alcide Simeon trailed behind them, trumpet in hand.

  “Ms. Perrault,” Nathalie greeted the woman, who seemed just as surprised as anyone to see Nathalie in the mix.