1503901092

by J. D. Horn

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Manon said, in the same Daddy’s-little-girl tone she used whenever Isadore gave in to her without a fight, whether it was for a new phone, concert tickets, or even financing spring break in Miami her junior year in college.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Lisette parroted her and went back to the cutting board. She pasted a half smile on her face as she focused on Michael, enjoying watching him squirm beneath her gaze. As he fumbled with the shrimp, she dropped an entire bunch of celery onto the board, then grabbed a cleaver and chopped off the root end in one fearsome stroke.

  “Isadore,” she said, repeating her cleaver attack on the celery sticks, “maybe you should ask your daughter and her lover when they planned to tell us about all of this.” A headache was forming, like a hot pin was being poked into her brain, but she kept hacking away, awaiting Isadore’s response.

  “It is a fair question,” Isadore said, addressing Manon.

  “Tonight, Mr. Perrault,” Michael answered for her. Manon’s eyes met Michael’s. He laid the deveining knife, which he had yet to use, on the table and took her hand. “Right after dinner with the Marins.”

  “Because,” Lisette said, dropping the knife to the board and advancing on him, “the only way to make the evening more delightful would be for us to learn you two had been carrying on in secret behind our backs. For two years.” The headache was building quickly, so fast it made her nauseated. But she didn’t have time for that now. “Give me that,” she said, reaching out for the colander.

  Michael caught her hand before she could touch the basket. “I know it was wrong to keep our relationship from you. I’m sorry.” Lisette’s neck was growing stiff. “We were afraid . . .” He paused and cast a quick glance at Manon before shifting his gaze back to Lisette. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Lisette could see the truth in them. “I was afraid you’d object. That you’d think I was too old for your daughter. Not good enough for her.”

  “Well, you are and you aren’t,” Lisette said, though without rancor. She drew a deep breath, and her hand relaxed in his.

  “I know I’m not good enough for your daughter, but I do love her.” The overhead light beamed down as bright as the sun.

  Lisette patted his hand with her free hand, as much a reassurance as a signal to release her. “I know you do,” she said. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She pointed at the colander. “You’re making a mess on the table. Bring that over to the sink.” She pointed to a cabinet. “Then reach me down the cornstarch from that cupboard.”

  Michael jumped up to obey.

  A look passed between Isadore and Manon. Storm was over. All clear. Like hell. She pointed at Manon. “Just because I’m ready to think about forgiving him, doesn’t mean it’s going to be so easy for you. You, ma fillette, are gonna have to work a little bit harder.”

  “I know, Mama. I’m really sorry.” Manon looked exhausted. She was bound to be. Lisette hadn’t confirmed the timing yet, but now that her eyes had been opened to all she’d been disregarding, she estimated the pregnancy at around four months.

  Lisette sighed, then circled around the table. She planted a kiss on top of her daughter’s head, breathing her own little girl in, remembering the first time she’d held her. Now the girl had gone off and made her a grandmother. She squeezed Manon’s shoulders and finished the circle, heading back toward the stove. She felt herself weaving.

  “You okay, Mama?” Manon called out to her.

  “Fine,” she said with more irritation than she felt. Her headache pounded at her, like it wanted to break her skull clean open. She glanced back at Manon, and even that slight movement made her dizzy. “I’m fine.” She gave Manon a reassuring smile. “Your mama’s just tired.” She closed her eyes before turning her head again, willing the headache to go away. When she reopened them, she focused on walking to the counter in a straight line. She could feel all eyes on her as she took each laborious step. Finally, the counter dug into her hip, signaling that she could stop.

  “Maybe I should close Vèvè tomorrow? Go to your office and help with the insurance paperwork?” Lisette said. Her left hand had fallen asleep on her. It tingled for a few seconds, then started to go numb.

  Isadore didn’t answer her questions. Instead, he looked her up and down. “You don’t look fine,” he said.

  Lisette raised her hand to stop him. “Nothing a good night’s sleep and watching these two walk down the aisle before my grandbaby is born won’t cure. Gonna need a place to live,” she said, trying her best to think things through. “’Course, it won’t work long-term, you two will want a place of your own, but you can live here till you find it. There’s a little house over on Tonti that someone’s fixed up real cute to sell. Right by the school. You should run by and check it out.”

  Silence. Another furtive glance passed between Michael and Manon.

  “What?” Lisette said.

  “Well, Mama, it’s only we’ve made other plans.”

  “Other plans.” Isadore repeated the words before Lisette could.

  Michael set the cornstarch on the counter and hurried back to Manon’s side. Well, this wasn’t going to be good.

  “I know you’ve never thought much of me working at the coffee shop.”

  “I,” Lisette said, her own voice like an icepick in her brain. She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I have never looked down on you for working an honest job.”

  “No, I’m sure you haven’t,” he said, placing a hand on Manon’s shoulder. “But I’m also sure you want more for your daughter. You want her to have a husband who’ll show some ambition.”

  It was true, but it felt like a trap. Lisette held her tongue.

  “I’ve been offered a much better-paying position: director of food and beverage at a luxury hotel. More responsibility. Plenty of room for advancement.”

  “Good for you, son,” Isadore said, leaning his chair back on its two hind legs. He was more than happy to hear this. Poor guy had no doubt been calculating how he was going to put food in yet another mouth—or two. But here Manon’s guy was stepping up. Lisette could almost see the relief wafting off Isadore, blurring his edges. “In the Quarter?”

  Michael looked down at Manon. She nodded at him.

  “No,” Lisette said, giving the answer she felt certain she was about to hear. She reached behind her neck, trying to rub the stiffness away. “It isn’t in the Quarter.”

  Manon reached up to take Michael’s hand. “You remember Michael took that trip to Oregon a couple of weeks ago?”

  No. Lisette didn’t remember. She hadn’t cared enough about the boy to put much energy into noticing his comings and goings. “Yeah,” she lied.

  “That’s . . . that’s where the job is.”

  “Portland, to be precise,” Michael added.

  “Well, yes,” Lisette said, “let’s do be precise.” She tried to focus on her daughter, but the headache made that impossible. The pain had shifted to right above her left eye, stabbing into her. A migraine maybe? I’ve never had one before, but . . . pay attention, dammit. She rubbed her finger over the spot. “I’m sure Mr. Hipster Caucasian will feel right at home there,” she addressed Manon, “but you do realize that Portland is precisely the whitest damned city in the country, and it’s a pale white, too, ’cause it rains precisely fourteen months out of the year there.” The pain in her head met the pain in her heart. That wasn’t physical, though. It was only everyday, ordinary heartbreak.

  “That’s a bit of . . . ,” Michael said with a nervous laugh, “well, actually that’s quite an exaggeration . . . on both counts.”

  He was standing up to Lisette, he was. Well, good. About time he showed a bit of spine.

  She put her hands to her temples and closed her eyes. Anything to block out the suddenly blinding light. Had Isadore changed the bulb for a higher wattage?

  The pieces she’d put together began spiraling back out.

  Focus. Focus. Focus. Her girl was leaving. She’d miss her. And it rubbed her ra
w that she’d get to see her first grandchild once, maybe twice a year, though that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  Vèvè. Lisette knew running the shop wasn’t Manon’s ambition—hell, it hadn’t been hers either—but it had been the right path to take. She’d always hoped her daughter would come around eventually. That she would keep the memory of Soulange Simeon alive in this city. Instead, Manon seemed anxious to flee as far as possible from her roots, from her tradition. From her mother.

  She opened her eyes to see two of everything, one eye reporting independently from the other. The room swirled around her and she fell forward. She heard Isadore’s chair scrape the floor as he jumped up to reach her. Her vision normalized as he bent over her. One face. One beautiful face. He was terrified. Oh, how she loved him. He was shouting, but she couldn’t make out his words.

  Words. She regretted the way she’d behaved tonight. She’d been short with Remy. Told him he might as well go off with his little Lucy, because she was in no mood to deal with him. She struggled to remember if her last words to Manon had been kind, or if she’d still been chewing her out. Only moments before and she couldn’t remember.

  Isadore’s face once more. If she could’ve smiled, she would have. She was happy that he’d be the last person she’d see. The thought was followed by the cold realization that she was dying, then a hot protest against that fact. She wasn’t ready to die. Not by a long shot. She had a husband and a family. She was not going to leave them. She opened her mouth, trying to tell Isadore to hold on to her. Not to let go. But he faded from sight.

  She was floating faceup in a dark sea. There were no stars above, nothing but red lights, burning rubies, bobbing up and down in pairs all around her. She tried to move her limbs, but, although she had sensation in them, they refused her commands. Only her eyes remained under her control. She scanned from side to side, trying to place herself. To discover the source of the lights. Those nearest her had slipped beneath the surface. She felt a jostling, and as she was lifted above the water, her body rose up to touch the cool night air. She was carried along by a quick, smooth motion, moving faster than the current. Then the water was gone. She was on land. Still moving. The ride grew bumpier, and she rocked from side to side. The jouncing movements widened her field of vision, allowing her to catch glimpses of the grouping of dark shapes that had come together to convey her along.

  Overhead she could make out the dark lines of cypress branches. A weak light began to glow around her, illuminating the creatures carrying her on their backs. In the gloaming, she recognized the leathery flesh and bony scales of her convoy—alligators. Panic commanded her to rise, but her body remained stiff. She wanted to scream, but her mouth remained closed. Still, inside her mind, her inner voice cried out. An old myth bubbled up through her panic. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was weighed after death, and those found wanting were sent to the dim hall of Maat. There, the reptile god Ammut would consume their wicked, heavy hearts. Maybe the story the ancient Egyptians had believed was as valid as any of the others—maybe that was the fate that awaited her.

  A heart. Pounding. Pounding.

  Pounding, though her own was still.

  The frenzied throbbing drowned out her thoughts, drowned out her internal scream. The light around her brightened, but she sensed this place never knew dawn. Whatever its source, the glow was nothing wholesome. Above the pounding, a shrill, cold whine soared and descended, a chilling tingle spreading across her breasts as this . . . force examined her, tasted her, and then rose again. The light flickered. Acrid smoke—the smell of burning tires intertwined with the stench of charring flesh—filled her senses.

  Her litter came to a stop. A new rhythm, the snapping of teeth, sounded around her as the cohesive force that had brought her here broke into its constituent reptiles. Jostled from side to side, Lisette caught sight of the source of this foul place’s dim light. The radiance came from the erratic dance of flames.

  The beasts crawled out from under her, lowering her to the ground as they slipped away.

  A face appeared above her. Human. Not Isadore.

  An unfamiliar young white woman, one Lisette might have thought beautiful if not for the madness in her eyes, bent over her. In the firelight, the woman’s hair glowed, not quite red, not quite blonde. Strawberry. Blond vénitien. That’s what her mother would have called it. Her mother. What would Soulange do in her place? Lisette’s spirit called out, but no answer came. She hadn’t expected a response. Not really. Lisette knew this place where she’d landed was nowhere near where her mother had gone.

  The woman pressed her cold lips to Lisette’s. Then she pulled away, hunching her shoulders and reaching out her hands, her fingers hooked like claws. She shot backward and upward into the air. Her skin milky, nearly opalescent, she hung overhead like a baleful moon. Manic laughter sharpened into a cackle and rained down on Lisette.

  This creature, Lisette realized, was no god. This was a witch. Not the polished, polite, contemporary type who used magic to gain privilege, but the old-school cut-your-heart-out-and-roast-your-children variety her mother had warned her about.

  A tall flame jumped up beside Lisette. It was, she sensed, a child of the inky blaze lending this place its weird twilight. The strange fire gave off cold and, like its source, burned darker than the surrounding gloom. It struck her that rather than being a source of light, the shadowy inferno was the devourer of it. Any luminescence in this world came from the death throes of the true light these wicked tongues consumed. The flame spread out in a zigzag fashion, tracing a shape around her. Lisette’s eyes couldn’t follow its full path, but from its jerky motion, she decided she was being surrounded by an inverted pentagram of fire.

  From above, the witch shrieked, “A loss of fertility to seal the lock.”

  Voices, a blend of masculine and feminine, none familiar, came at her from each point of the star. They’d approached without her noticing, or perhaps they’d been there all along. She strained to turn her head, to get a glimpse of these witches, but her body remained rigid.

  “A new conception,” they chanted in unison, “to break it.”

  The witch above bobbed up and down on invisible currents. “A loss of reason to seal the lock.”

  “A return to lucidity,” the voices on her periphery called out together, “to break the seal.”

  They seemed to be following a type of a versicle and response. Lisette’s mind resurrected a fragment of a catechism from her schooling at Queen of Heaven Elementary. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead . . .

  A flute-like trill joined the incessant, high-pitched whine. The throbbing beat grew louder.

  “A loss of love to seal the lock,” the witch above screamed, the pitch of each word in discord with the whine, albeit in what seemed to be a measured, intentional dissonance.

  These words sizzled in Lisette’s ears. She’d suffered a loss of love herself. Her love with Vincent Marin had been sacrificed to seal the spell that would maroon The Book of the Unwinding between the common world and the Dreaming Road—existing in both at once, though fully in neither. Laure Marin had supposedly led Lisette’s mother to believe the book needed to be hidden from her daughter-in-law Astrid, but Lisette didn’t trust Laure’s version of the story one bit.

  “New love found,” the voices said together, “to break the seal.”

  These people, or witches, or demons, or whatever they were . . . they were trying to undo the spell.

  “No,” her mind cried out from indignation as much as fear. She should not have had her young heart ripped out, even if that pain had led her to Isadore, and sure as hell her mother should not have died to protect the Book for less than three measly decades.

  “A loss of life,” the words from above drowned out Lisette’s inner voice, “to seal the lock.”

  In a blink, the witches from the periphery were on her, leaning over her. She could see flesh, though the night helped to disguise its tones. Faces wer
e hidden from her, their features blurring, shifting.

  Five hands reached down, each taking its turn slapping her on her breast over her heart.

  “A return to life,” was all she heard, followed by a beep—steady, even in pitch. She felt cool. Dry. Her eyes fluttered open, though she didn’t remember closing them. Bright light. That same beeping again. White sheets. Metal railings. She lay in a narrow bed, wires attached to various points on her body.

  A hand grasped hers. Her eyes focused on the face looking down at her. Isadore.

  She heard Manon calling out for a nurse.

  Tears streamed down Isadore’s face. “There you are. There you are,” he repeated himself. “You didn’t think I heard you, but I did. I was holding on as tight as I could. No way I was letting my girl go.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The headlights of Lincoln’s pickup illuminated the stretch before them, but the road came at them almost too fast for Evangeline’s eyes to follow. The dotted white line on the road maddened her. It indicated that she could change lanes at any time, but that was clearly a lie. Evangeline never used to believe in destiny, but of late it was pretty damned clear a guiding hand was playing with her, tugging her in a crooked line to a predetermined fate. Maybe she should surrender, but the thought of losing her free will pissed her off to no end. Be that controlling force a god or a man, Evangeline was going to resist the bastard at every turn.

  Evangeline looked back over her shoulder at the dim outline in the darkness of Celestin Marin’s haunted corpse wrapped in a tarpaulin. “Thank you for the clothes. And the ride.”

  “’Course,” Lincoln said. Evangeline turned to study his profile. He took his eyes off the road and faced her, but the shadow prevented her from reading his expression. She didn’t need to use her eyes to understand his thoughts. His feelings for her radiated from him; his aura, rose with flecks of gold, reached out toward her, not touching but hoping to be touched.

  She looked away. Beyond the passenger window, a shifting black line of trees marked their progress. “It would’ve been a lot faster to take Lake Forest.”