“I am not toying with you, mon coeur,” he murmured. Releasing one of her arms, he traced the line of her jaw with a single fingertip. “I want you,” he told her as his fingertip followed the line of her throat, down across her collarbone until he reached edge of the scooped neckline of her dress. “I will not lie to you, love. Not a moment goes by that I do not think of you. Of your beauty and your fire and the light you have brought into my life.” His finger followed the neckline of her dress, dipping down to the soft swell of her breasts and then back up, sending little frissons of heat and awareness across her skin. “Not a moment passes that I do not think of us. Of our future. Of what it would be like to have you as my own,” he whispered.
“I know you don’t mean to toy with me, Alexandre.” She said his name softly, her voice hitching with desire even as she pulled away. “But there is no future for this. For what is between us.”
“You are wrong,” he told her, his voice thick with meaning.
“I wish I were.” She smiled sadly. “I wish I could imagine the future as you do, but I know otherwise.” Reaching up, she brushed a stray lock of hair back from his smooth forehead. She knew immediately it was a mistake and started to draw back, but he grasped her wrist and covered her slim hand with his own.
“Can you not learn to imagine it?”
She ruthlessly pressed down the hope she felt at his words until it was no more than a pinpoint of light in her otherwise dark future, and then she firmly pulled away.
“You do not believe me.” He watched her face as he let her go. “Or do you not want me as well?”
“How can you not see that this is impossible?” she asked, her voice trembling with regret and her eyes stinging with tears.
They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity—the heat of the day swirling around them, the sun glinting off the gold in his hair, and Armantine waiting for him to turn away from her. He, the first man who had looked at her and seen past her beauty to her very self, who was as interested in her thoughts on art and life as he was in the curve of her waist or swell of her breast. But she knew he would eventually turn from her, would eventually leave.
I wanted to reach out and touch him, to plead for him not to go. I wasn’t sure if the feelings were mine or Armantine’s, but all that mattered was that I had no control. I was a passenger in her body, nothing more.
Alex reached down to his boot and withdrew a knife. It flashed in the sunlight, as bright as his eyes had suddenly become. Fear sifted through Armantine, and in an instant we both remembered him crouching over a broken body, a bloodied knife glinting in his hand. Though she believed he was not the one who had killed the girl, she watched him cautiously just the same.
He stepped closer to the oak and stabbed the blade into it, again and again. Wary of the violence with which he assaulted the tree, she inched forward slowly, trying to see what he was doing, but then he stopped and turned back to her. He’d carved two lopsided, primitive-looking, interlocking letter A’s into the weathered trunk. The tightly coiled spring in Armantine’s chest eased a little at the sight.
“I promise you this,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “I have searched for you too long to let you go now. I will find a way to make you believe in my promises, and someday long after now, we will bring our grandchildren to this very spot and show them this tree, this place where I pledged myself to you.”
“Alex—” Her voice was shaking, and I knew what she was going to say. She would refuse him again, even as she wanted to accept him completely.
“No, ma chère. There has been enough talk. Enough fear.” He framed her face with his broad hands. Gently, he smoothed back her hair. Armantine turned her face into his hand, reveling in its warmth and strength until he turned her face to him again. He traced the lines of her face reverently, as though he was memorizing them the way a cleric might learn a holy book. Gently, his fingertips learned the gentle swell of her cheeks, the arch of her brows, and, finally, the rough pad of his thumb brushed across the lips she so desperately wanted him to kiss.
I knew if he tried, she would let him. And I knew what it would cost her. His gaze never left hers as he pulled her into his arms and his lips descended to meet hers …
And that’s when I woke up.
“Of all the stupid things,” I mumbled to myself, rubbing the nap from my eyes and trying to shake off the vividness of the dream. Apparently I could dream about being drowned multiple times each week without once missing out on the terrifying end of that, but when I dreamt about a gorgeous Frenchman, I manage to miss the best part.
“Do you often talk to yourself, ma chère?” His familiar voice came from nearby, and I froze at the sound of it. I looked down at my hands and was relieved to see my own pale skin flecked with freckles, my grandmother’s ring on the middle finger of my right hand. I twisted it to keep from pinching myself in front of him.
“Maybe,” I said, finally raising my head to look at him. I half expected him to be wearing the smart black suit from my dream, but he was dressed in the same clothes he’d been in before. His shirt was freshly laundered and his pants were a soft, dark gray.
“Do you always sneak up on people when they’re sleeping?” I added, lifting one eyebrow in his direction and trying to affect a wryness I didn’t really feel.
He looked different in other ways too. The dream’s faded tones had dampened the intensity of his green eyes and washed out the gold spun through his hair. In the dream, it had been brushed back away from his face, but now it was the slightest bit mussed and fell lazily over his forehead. In real life he seemed more human, somehow.
“I did not want to disturb you. You looked like a painting, sleeping there with your fiery hair and fair skin.” He was looking at me the way the Alex of my dreams watched Armantine, and my breath hitched in my throat. “You looked too picturesque to be real.”
I stood up and stretched my stiff muscles, trying to ignore my reaction to him. “The crick in my neck is definitely real,” I told him tartly, not wanting him to see the effect he—or his words—had on me. My emotions were too close to the surface because of the dream—they were still too close to what she had felt.
I found myself wondering again about the picture we’d found that morning. About whether there had truly been an Armantine, or if I’d only imagined a similarity between the daguerreotype and the girl I dreamt about.
“So, are you talking to me now?” I asked. It seemed an easier question—or at least a less crazy one—than the others crowding my head.
“But of course. When have I not talked to you?”
Slowly the desire aroused by the dream was fading. “This morning, for starters,” I reminded him. “You have something against Piers?”
“It is of no concern,” he said with the type of certainty used by someone who has always gotten his own way.
“Right.” I started picking up the pictures I’d spread out on the ground in front of me. The combination of my morning at Thisbe’s cottage and dreaming about Armantine’s volatile emotions had left me too exhausted and confused to deal with Alex’s evasions and half answers.
“I’ve angered you,” he said, a look of confusion on his face.
“No. Not really,” I hedged. “It’s just been a long day.”
“You should stay away from the witch’s home, Lucy.”
The change in topic was abrupt, but his face conveyed a stony seriousness that made me pause.
“I doubt Thisbe was a witch,” I said. “Besides, she’s been dead a long time, and I have a job to do.”
“Please.” He choked on the word, like he wasn’t used to using it. “It is a very dangerous place. Will you stay away from there? For me?”
“No,” I told him tartly, even as my pulse stuttered at the earnestness of his request. “I told you, I have a job to do and I’m not letting anyone’s superstitions keep me from doing it. I promised my dad I’d help him out and I don’t break my promises. Besides, I barely kno
w you, and from your little disappearing act today, I’m not even sure I want to.”
As I struggled with the loose prints, I managed to drop the binder that held the others. The photographs tumbled out as it fell, like leaves to the ground.
“What are those?” he asked, pointing to the images scattered at my feet.
“Just some shots I took of the house and grounds.” I bent to scoop them up before they could blow away.
He leaned over to look at them. “This—” He gestured to the photos. “It is your work?”
I nodded, and he seemed amused. “I should have known.” He shook his head. “Will you show me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, pretending to consider his request. “Depends on what you’re offering in return.”
He grinned, the left side of his mouth pulling up higher than the right and a bit of humor and warmth breaking through his usual mask. “And what is it that you want of me?”
“Answers.”
His brows went up at that. “To what questions?”
“Well, you could start by telling me why you keep following me.”
“I am not following you intentionally,” he said slowly, carefully. “You simply happen to be where I am.”
“So it’s a coincidence?” I asked doubtfully.
He shrugged. “If you would like.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”
He smiled fully then, unable to hide his amusement. “Please.” The word came out easier this time for him. “I would very much like to see your work.” He gestured for me to open the binder. I thought about refusing, but he looked so earnest in his request that I relented.
He motioned for me to join him as he sat, his legs crossed in front of him. When we were settled, he leaned against the tree and I pulled out my favorite of the pictures I’d taken since arriving at the plantation—a study of the dark shadows that the columns threw against the white façade of the house, like solid iron bars caging it in.
He studied the photo carefully. More carefully than I would’ve expected him to. “You have captured the secretive quality of the mansion, yes? It is quite striking. It gives the feeling of being trapped by the grandeur of the place.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest. Few people ever understood my photographs so quickly. I mean, people always thought they were good, but not everybody really got them.
“That’s exactly what I was going for,” I told him. “I wanted the shadows to look like the bars of a prison. They seemed so intensely malevolent that day. Here, look at this one.” I moved a new picture to the top of the pile, hoping his reaction wouldn’t disappoint.
It was the image of the large fountain in the south garden. Light pooled around the statue of a young girl who was holding her hands to the sky. I kept my eyes on the image, watching him out of the corner of my eye as he studied it, afraid that if I turned and looked at him directly, he would see how much I wanted him to get it. To understand this one too.
Alex didn’t respond right away. His brows were creased above those cat’s eyes of his, and his jaw was tight. All at once, his face seemed to unfold and he glanced up at me, his eyes no longer shadowed or evasive. In that moment, I had the feeling he saw more than just what I was doing with the photograph. I had the uncanny feeling that he saw me, too. Really saw me.
There was too much in his gaze—too much intensity, too many questions, just … too much. I couldn’t help but look away.
After a long, expectant moment, he cleared his throat and spoke again. “She looks like some sort of ethereal being in this one,” he said. “But you make it a question: is the water lifting her or pulling her back?”
He got it. I bit my lip to keep from smiling like an idiot as I kept my eyes trained on the image.
“You are very talented, Lucy,” he said softly, leaning back away from me and the photographs I held.
“I have a lot to learn,” I hedged, risking another look at him. “But I hope I can make a life from it.”
“From taking pictures?”
I nodded. “Photography is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. There’s something ridiculously satisfying about finding the perfect moment that, you know, captures an experience. Preserves it for all time.”
He frowned. “This is what your pictures do?” The coldness in his tone surprised me. I couldn’t imagine what I’d said wrong to put that kind of ice in his words.
“Well, maybe not yet,” I replied carefully, trying to collect my thoughts before speaking again. “But it’s what I want them to do. Pictures are a record—a testament of a time. They’re a way of capturing the moment and holding it forever.” I chose my words carefully, but his face remained tense as I spoke. “And I’m babbling again,” I mumbled by way of apology.
“I am delighted to hear you talk.” But there was something dark in his tone that didn’t match his words.
It struck me then that the Alex in my dreams was a gentler, more idealized version of the boy that was in my here and now. With that Alex, I felt safe, even if Armantine didn’t. With this Alex? I wasn’t sure what to feel. The more time I spent around him, the more I wondered if maybe my subconscious had just evened out his rough edges and softened his intensity.
Since I’d been judging this Alex based on some silly dreams, I hadn’t considered that there might be something dark behind the mask of disinterested amiability he wore like armor. Perhaps something a little bit dangerous.
The silence stretched between us. Suddenly I didn’t want to be there, alone in the clearing with him. I put my photos back into the binder.
“Have I done something wrong?” he asked. His voice still sounded tight, strained, but it was also tinged with something like regret.
“No,” I lied. “I just need to get back. My parents will be wondering where I am.”
As I stood to leave, I resisted looking at him. I liked the Alex in my dreams, but I wasn’t going to make the mistake of confusing dreams with reality.
“Lucy?”
I stopped and turned back to him, hoping his eyes wouldn’t be cold again. They weren’t, but neither were they as understanding as they’d been just moments before—when he’d been looking at my work.
“I am sorry if I upset you,” he said as he stood to join me.
“It’s okay. I need to go anyway.” If nothing else, I needed to put some distance between us. And between the fantasy I’d dreamt up and the reality of the boy in front of me.
“Please, I will go. Stay and enjoy the afternoon.” He gave me a half smile that could’ve been charming, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
I grabbed my bag from the ground, but Alex was faster. Before I could leave, he was already backing away. He gave me a final, tentative wave before turning and heading toward the woods. When he stepped into the shadows of the trees, I lost sight of him. And I was alone again.
All at once I realized how hot the day had become, how thick the air felt. How strangely empty the clearing was without him in it. Even in the dream, the clearing had felt more complete with him there.
The dream.
The whole time I’d been talking with Alex, I hadn’t quite been able to shake the intensity of Armantine’s feelings. The girl’s emotions about her Alex had been so stark, so strong, they’d colored my every reaction to him. But there had been something else. Something I was starting to remember clearly, now that he wasn’t there to distract me.
I turned to the tree—the ancient-looking oak dripping with Spanish moss, just as it had been in the dream. Carefully I searched the trunk, running my fingers over its rough bark, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. “Just a dream.” I breathed easier at the thought.
Slinging my bag on my shoulder, I turned toward our cottage—away from the pond and Alex and all the crazy thoughts I’d been having. The lack of the two interlocking A’s on the tree’s gnarled trunk was confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t having dreams about some long-dead girl and a guy who looked uncann
ily like the guy I’d just been talking to. Armantine was only a figment of my overactive and under-rested imagination. She hadn’t actually sat under this tree with another Alex more than a century before, and—
Then it struck me. That many years ago, the tree would have been smaller. I’d looked in the wrong place. I needed to look higher.
For a second, I thought about not going back. In some ways it would have been easier to just keep walking toward home, to forget about the tree and my theories. Too bad I’ve never been one to do things the easy way.
It took a few minutes for me to figure out how to get enough of a foothold on the trunk to hoist myself up. At first, I almost missed it, mistaking it for part of the rough bark. But as I ran my fingers over the shallow, jagged lines, I knew that nature couldn’t have designed those deeply gouged angles. Dark with age, the two intertwining A’s had somehow withstood the march of time.
I lowered myself back to the ground and, without thinking, glanced at the woods. I half expected Alex to be standing there, watching me, but the tree line was empty. All around me, the clearing felt very still, like the air itself was waiting.
I’d convinced myself that knowing Thisbe’s name might have been a coincidence. I could explain away the girl in the picture as my overactive imagination … but the carvings on the tree? I knew for certain no one had told me about that.
If those carvings were real—if those things really had happened—I knew it meant that my dreams might be more than just dreams. It meant that Alex shouldn’t—couldn’t—still be alive.
It meant that I really needed to talk to Mama Legba.
Twelve
After my discovery of the letters in the tree, every minute felt like an hour until Chloe pulled up the next afternoon in her blue Chevy, ready to take me to the St. John’s Eve festival. When she finally arrived, it took everything I had not to leap into the car before it came to a complete stop.
“You look rough,” she said by way of greeting as I slid into the front seat.
“Thanks,” I said dryly. There was another girl in the backseat, a sandy-haired blonde. “I’m Lucy,” I told her. “Apparently, I look rough.”
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