“There’s something in this pocket,” he told us as he eased his fingers into a flap in the ancient material and extracted a small object that reminded me of a booklet. “Amazing.”
I knew what it was before he opened it. I’d recognized the embossed design bordering the cover almost instantly, and I felt a wave of panic run through me. I knew that behind the fragile cover was a single image, and I knew exactly what that image would be. My mouth went dry as I watched in disbelief, wishing futilely that no one would open it.
“Do you think this might be a picture of Thisbe?” Piers asked, oblivious to my distress.
“Maybe. There were definitely a lot of slaves with skin that fair, but see the glass? This is a daguerreotype, not a simple photograph. And according to the records I’ve seen, Thisbe was much, much older than this girl when the technology for this type of image was being used,” my dad answered.
As I inched closer to them on unsteady feet, I had the strange sense that both my dad and Piers sounded very far away. It was almost as if everything in my consciousness was focused only on the object, on willing myself to see anything there but the single image I knew it held.
But it didn’t work. While Piers and my father debated the age of the image, I met the gaze of a girl with dark hair and flawless skin who, if the portrait had been in color, would have had eyes the exact same color as my own. Eyes that hungered for the person behind the camera.
Armantine. It was the last thing I thought before my vision went black.
Ten
Pain and darkness and the cold wet of death surrounding me. And I’m falling, sinking until my lungs burn with the fetid water that has pulled me into its embrace.
“Luce? Lucy, honey. Come on sweetheart, wake up for me.” My dad’s worried voice sounded through the depths, pulling me up, up toward the starry night above. Up toward the world.
“She’ll be fine, Dr. Aimes. It’s probably the heat that got to her.” And then Piers, his low voice rumbling through the liquid and buoying me up as well. So close.
“I think she’s coming to. Lucy? Lucy, honey, can you hear me?”
My eyes fluttered open and then closed against the brightness of the day. “’M fine.”
Strong hands pushed me up to a sitting position as I tried to figure out how I’d gotten outside and why I was lying on the porch. “What happened?”
“You fainted.” My dad’s face was tight with worry, even as his voice was gentle.
“What?” I blinked in confusion. “I don’t faint.”
Piers frowned. “I could definitely testify otherwise.”
“The heat must have gotten to you,” my dad said.
“My camera.” I groped frantically at where the strap should have been around my neck.
“Piers has it—he caught you before you went completely to the floor,” my dad said.
I felt heat creep into my cheeks. “Thanks,” I muttered, hoping he wouldn’t tell Chloe about my swan dive.
“No problem,” Piers said, holding up my camera. “But I wasn’t fast enough to save it.”
“My baby,” I moaned, holding out my hands to take my cracked camera. The lens was definitely busted, and it looked like the casing was pretty banged up as well.
“We’ll take it into town and get it fixed this weekend,” my dad said. “But for right now, let’s get you back home. You feel okay to stand up?”
I nodded. “I don’t know what happened.”
“That makes three of us,” he said, helping me to my feet. “I think that’s enough for you today. I’m officially giving you the day off. Get into the air conditioning and get some rest.” He brushed at the dark circles I knew were beneath my eyes. “You haven’t been sleeping enough.”
I ignored his concern and gathered up my bag, checking my camera again—it was still as cracked and damaged as it was a moment before. Gently I tucked her into my bag, but before I could sling it over my shoulder, Piers plucked the bag out of my hands and added it to his load.
“You don’t have to—” I started to say, but the look he gave me stopped me cold. “Thanks,” I said instead.
“Should we gather up the artifacts before we go?” Piers asked.
My dad shook his head. “We’ll need to leave them for Byron to catalog first. You two go on back and I’ll lock up here.”
Piers and I started back across the field that separated Thisbe’s cabin from the Le Ciel property, back toward the pond and the big house beyond. As we stepped into the thick line of trees, I glanced back only once, glad to have the cabin behind me.
“So what’s Armantine?” Piers asked.
“Who?”
“So, it’s a who?”
“I … uh … ” I blinked at him.
“‘Armantine.’ You said it right before you went down.”
“I’m not sure,” I told him.
It wasn’t really a lie, I told myself. I didn’t know for sure that the girl in the image was the same as the one in my dreams. Old pictures have a tendency to look the same, and there was no way of telling if a girl named Armantine had ever even existed.
But I knew deep down—in that place where we know things instinctively—that the uncanny familiarity of the image threatened all the careful, rational explanations I’d been constructing about the dreams I was having.
Then, as we approached the edge of the line of trees ringing the pond, I saw Alex leaning stiffly against a thick pine. The thing that had been growing tighter and tighter in my chest all morning, ever since waking from the dream about him leaning over Lila’s dead body, loosened when I saw him standing there, half in hidden by the trees.
The mid-morning sun cast dark shadows over the angles of his face, and the light filtering through the trees picked up the gold that ran through his hair and highlighted the tones of his skin. My fingers itched to capture those contrasts in a photograph—the angles and softness, the shadows and light—but my camera was busted.
I’d wanted to see him again ever since he’d walked away from me that day by the pond, but it was more than mere curiosity that drew me to him. He was attractive, sure. Maybe even beautiful. But there was something else about Alex that captured my attention in a different way. There was something compelling about him—about the way he’d seemed to be holding himself back that day, while at the same time daring me to figure him out. Because I’d sensed that he didn’t mean to tease or lead me on, part of me wanted to take his dare, to scratch beneath the surface of the calm neutrality he wore and discover what he was hiding beneath.
I had been wondering if maybe the dream about Lila’s death was my subconscious warning me about Alex, but as he stood there, bathed in dappled light, he didn’t look any more capable of murdering someone than I was. I started to raise my hand to wave to him, but his mouth tightened and he shook his head, silently urging me not to draw attention to his presence. And then, ducking back into the trees, he was gone.
“What is it?” Piers asked. Apparently he was still watching me with those sharp gray eyes of his.
“Huh?” I turned to look at him.
“It looked like you saw something over there.” He pointed to the empty place where Alex had been.
“I didn’t see anyone,” I lied.
“I didn’t say it was a someone.” Piers narrowed his eyes at me.
I looked away, ignoring his unspoken question.
“That’s two, Lucy. You’ve had a rough morning, so I’m going to let it slide. But you should know right now that I’m not someone you can lie to.” His voice was low, but there was steel running through it.
“I don’t know wha—”
“Don’t,” he told me, the clipped abruptness of the tone silencing me.
I nodded, more to myself than to him, and we walked on in silence. I did look back again, hoping to see Alex one more time, but he was gone.
That afternoon, I found Chloe leading some tourists back to the gatehouse. Her pale green gown swished rhythmically as she walked
along the path, and when she noticed me watching her, she raised her hand and waved.
After she’d deposited the last of her group at the gates, she turned back and found me. “Piers said you took quite a tumble today.”
I felt my face grow warm. “Told you already, huh?”
“My man tells me everything,” she said, but then her smile faltered. “Or at least everything he thinks I need to know. He wanted me to check and see if y’all were okay, when I got off my shift, but it looks like you saved me a trip.”
“Glad to be of assistance,” I said dryly.
“So,” she said, dragging out the syllable in anticipation. “Tell me everything.”
“About what?”
She slugged my arm affectionately. “About what? About Thisbe’s place, girl. You know you and your daddy are the first people to go through those doors in a long time, don’t you?”
“Piers was there too.”
“Oh, he’s too busy today for me to bother him, and I’ve got you here now, so tell me everything. Did you see a ghost? Is that what made you go down like some wannabe Scarlett O’Hara?” She made a show of putting her hand to her forehead like some wilting Southern belle.
“No. No ghosts. Just a bunch of dust and spiderwebs,” I told her, trying to dismiss the trickle of unease running down my spine.
She wrinkled her nose at that, her smile dimming a bit. “That’s it? You gotta do better than that if you want me to tell you what Mama Legba said yesterday about reoccurring dreams,” she said slyly.
“You asked her?” I perked up instantly. “Tell me.”
“You first,” she insisted.
“Look, Chloe, there’s not much to tell. The house is just kind of grimy and dirty, but I didn’t see any ghosts. It was actually mostly empty. Well, except for the box my dad found in an old cupboard.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” She looped an arm through mine as we walked along the path toward the employees’ dorm. “What was in the box? Old shrunken heads and Voodoo charms?”
“No shrunken heads, but there was something Piers seemed to think might have been used a Voodoo doll. You’ll have to ask him about it, though. It all looked like old junk to me.” Well, except for the picture. But I didn’t tell Chloe about that. I didn’t even want to think about the picture.
“It would, Yankee girl.” She said the words without malice.
“Okay, your turn. What did Mama Legba say about the dreams?”
“She wouldn’t tell me anything.”
I stopped abruptly at that. “What? Then why were you holding out on me?”
“I wanted to hear about Thisbe’s place,” she said mischievously. “Besides, she didn’t tell me anything because she wants to talk with you herself.”
“Really?” After the strange dream and the stranger morning I’d spent in Thisbe’s house, part of me wasn’t in any rush to go see the old Voodoo Queen again. But another part of me couldn’t help but be excited about the chance to maybe get some answers.
Chloe nodded. “You busy tomorrow night? She told me to bring you to St. John’s Eve and she’ll talk with you then. You got something white to wear?” She looked doubtfully at my usual dark T-shirt and faded plaid shoes.
“You mean, like a shirt?”
“No, you have to wear all white, head to toe. Or I guess you don’t have to, but you’ll stick out like the Yankee interloper you are if you don’t.”
“I’m sure I can throw something together,” I told her as I mentally browsed through my closet. “What time’s the party?”
“Don’t let anyone hear you calling it a party. That’s like saying you go to church every Sunday for a party. It’s not a party. It’s a ritual.”
The word “ritual” brought with it images of snakes and fires. Of limbs moving rhythmically to tribal drumbeats and blood blooming across lifeless, broken bodies. “What kind of ritual?” I asked warily.
“It’s a celebration of the summer solstice, and Mama Legba will ask the spirits to intercede for a good harvest. She’ll do a ceremony on the bridge that crosses St. John’s Bayou, and then we’ll all eat and dance.” She frowned. “Okay, maybe it is a little like a party. Anyway, we’ll need to leave around five. I can pick you up if you want.”
“That would be great,” I said as we reached the employees’ dorm.
“I’d love to stick around and hang out, but I promised my momma I’d help her out with some stuff at the house this afternoon, and I’m already later than I told her I’d be,” Chloe told me as she mounted the steps.
“Yeah, I have some stuff to do with the shots I was working on. I’ll see you tomorrow night?”
“Absolutely. And don’t forget to wear white.”
“I won’t,” I told her.
Chloe left, and I turned to walk back to my family’s cottage, but as I got closer to it, the thought of sitting indoors and staring at a computer screen didn’t appeal to me. So I just ran inside and printed off a few of the pictures I’d taken the last few days, including the ones from Thisbe’s cabin that morning, and then headed out to the pond. I hoped I’d see Alex there. I had some questions I wanted answers to—starting with why Chloe didn’t know who he was.
Eleven
When I came through the trees, I was disappointed to find the clearing empty. Alex wasn’t around. Not wanting my fair skin to burn any more than it already had in the Louisiana sun, I walked toward the beautiful old oak that anchored the far end of the pond. The ground around it was soft with thick grass that had taken hold in the shade of its branches, so I sat down at the base and pulled out the binder holding the pictures.
I looked over the first few images, sorting them out on the ground in front of me, but when I reached the prints of Thisbe’s cabin, I felt the same sense of unease sift through me as I had when approaching the real thing. So I closed the binder and leaned back to rest for a bit in the coolness of the tree’s shade.
When I opened my eyes, Alex was sitting next to me, as golden and beautiful as he’d been earlier that day. The lines of his face were softer, though, and his jaw didn’t have the tightness I’d noticed then. His eyes were clear and bright. Their green depths reminded me of the lushness of the forests in the North—a living, fertile color I hadn’t encountered anywhere else in the overheated Southern summer. He was looking at me with such intensity that it fairly took my breath away.
I’d had short-lived relationships before and flirted with crushes, but I’d never had someone look at me the way Alex was looking at me at that moment. Love. Hope. Safety. The feelings coursed through me with reckless abandon. I loved him, which was a ridiculous thought. I didn’t even know him. But the feeling was there, deep inside me and so sure I couldn’t dismiss it.
And that’s when I knew I was her again—Armantine. This was only another dream. And for a single heartbeat I hated her, because I knew he wasn’t really looking at me. For that single heartbeat I wanted him to, but the brief burst of anger I felt couldn’t survive the feelings of love and trust and desire welling up from her. Knowing what she felt for him—I couldn’t help but feel it too.
They were sitting under the oak, inches apart. His hand was close to hers, their fingers barely brushing, and I could feel her delight at his closeness. But I could also feel a new sense of fear bubbling up inside of her.
Something had happened. Something had shaken her and made her remember how impossible everything about their situation was. As much as she wanted to stay there with him, she was terrified of what would happen to her if she let him know he held her heart.
He looked at me—her—and smiled. It wasn’t the half-cocked mocking grin he’d given me that afternoon by the pond. “You can trust me, you know,” he told her, his voice soft and urgent.
But she didn’t know. I could sense the doubt that kept equal measure with her hope.
“I mean you no harm, Armantine. Truly. I could never harm you, ma chère.” His words were serious, but the endearment rolled off his tongu
e too easily and I could sense her withdraw at its casual use.
“You may not mean to, but … ” Her voice came out deeper, huskier, with a breathless quality it didn’t have before in the studio. “I must go, monsieur.”
“Are we back to that, then?” His voice darkened. “Shall you refuse me the privilege of using your name now, as well?” His words were sad, but they were laced through with a coldness born of frustration.
“No,” she said softly. “You may use my name, but only when we are alone. It’s not proper otherwise.” Her heart ached even as she said the words. She loved the intimacy of being allowed the privilege of calling him Alexandre, but her fear that he might shatter her fragile world held her back.
“Then we shall be alone again, yes?” He took her hand and covered it with his own. “You will promise me that?”
I willed her to accept him even as I felt her withdrawing. “I can’t make such a promise,” she whispered. “I should never have come here.” She started to gather the charcoal pencils that had fallen into the grass near her skirts and placed them, along with sketches she’d made of the pond and of him, into her bag. They were, she realized with a sudden certainty, the only thing she’d ever really have of him.
“I shouldn’t be here.” She didn’t look at him as she stood up. “Can you take me back?”
“Why?” He rose to his feet and grasped her arms, the word coming out dangerous, low, and with a thread of pain running through it.
Armantine paused, considering her worlds carefully. “I have nothing to offer you.” She met his eyes. “Except what I cannot. What I will not.”
His brows drew together as he puzzled out the meaning of her words, and then he seemed to understand. His frustration seemed to roll off of him in dangerous waves. “You are worth far more than you suggest, Armantine. You mean much more to me than what you suggest.” He searched her face for some affirmation, and the anger in his eyes eased to disappointment. “I thought you understood that?”
“What is there to understand?” Her voice was gentle, but it carried in it all of the pain of her regret. At the sound of it, he eased his grasp on her.
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