A Feather of Stone #3

by Cate Tiernan

  Maybe he hadn’t really killed that woman in our vision?

  I thought about what I had seen. The woman had been facedown in the mud of the swamp. We’d seen someone chasing her—she’d had dark hair and dark eyes, but she’d looked nothing like anyone else we’d met in the Treize. Think, think.

  Oh my God. Melita, the dark one who had worked the spell—it had been her. Marcel had killed her. Or had not killed her. Everyone in the Treize assumed Melita was gone since she’d never surfaced after that crazy rite so long ago.

  But . . . if Melita hadn’t died, if she was in fact still alive, then Daedalus wouldn’t need both me and Clio for the rite to make a full Treize. I stood frozen in thought, my mind whirling.

  What if someone knew that Melita was alive, knew where she was now? They would know that they needed only one of us for the rite. Would they be trying to get rid of one of us, then? Maybe they wanted Melita to come back and thought that killing one of us would do it? Which would explain the attacks.

  Then again, if Melita was out there, why wouldn’t the person who knew it have come forward a long time ago, back when our mom was born, or her mom, or her mom before her. . . . Why wait until twins came along and just get rid of one twin? It seemed pretty far-fetched. Then again, we were talking about a rite that could make people immortal, so I guessed the term far-fetched was kind of relative.

  All I knew was I had to tell Clio about all of this as soon as I could.

  Would That Kill Him?

  The taxi glided to a stop. Lying on the backseat, her eyes closed, Claire groaned. She was too tired to get out and deal with this. How much would it cost to just sleep here in the taxi for a while?

  “Yo, ma’am, we’re here.”

  The door opened and Claire felt warm air on her legs. With great difficulty she opened her eyes, wincing at the glare. Her driver stood impassively on the sidewalk, no doubt wondering if she would have to haul Claire out herself.

  “Okay,” Claire managed, struggling upright. She coughed and got out of the cab. Her driver, satisfied that Claire was conscious, popped the trunk and got out Claire’s lone, battered suitcase.

  On the sidewalk, Claire stretched, breathing in. Noticing the driver looking at her, she rummaged in her purse for American money, which, amazingly, she’d remembered to get at the JFK airport.

  She paid the driver, remembering to tip her much more than she’d had to tip anyone in Thailand.

  “Thanks, ma’am.” The driver got back in the cab and drove off.

  Claire stretched again, her short wrinkled skirt riding up, then lit a cigarette, getting her bearings. She looked around. This block of the Quarter hadn’t changed much. Some things would be different, she knew, but it had been only about five years since she’d been here. So not too shocking.

  She inhaled deeply. At least she didn’t feel like she was detoxing anymore, now that she was physically in New Orleans. She had to see Daedalus soon, though, to get rid of the last of the twitching. Bastard. Whatever he’d called her for better be damn important. Yeah, she would go see him. First, though, she needed a bath and a drink and, in the best possible world, both at the same time.

  Had anyone ever tried cutting Daedalus’s heart out and throwing it into a fire or something? Would that do it? Would that kill him? Because maybe the time had come for someone to try.

  Heaving a sigh, Claire put out her cigarette and grasped the handle of her suitcase. One wheel had broken off, and now the suitcase lurched unevenly behind her. She bypassed the big pink house, heading down the crushed-oyster-shell driveway on one side. In the back was a small, long row house, cut into three tiny apartments. Two hundred and fifty years ago, slaves had lived here. Claire shook her head and sighed. You’d think Jules would get over it.

  The air was still, as if there were a storm coming. Claire still hated lightning but didn’t mind rainstorms too much now. For years after Melita’s rite, she’d cringed every time it thundered. But that had been a long time ago.

  Pausing for a moment, Claire concentrated, knowing her nerves were jangled. She was desperate for a drink, she was exhausted, her powers were frayed and shot. Yet she was still able to pick up his energy, right here in the first apartment. She climbed the three small steps and rang the doorbell, then pounded on the wooden door. She felt sticky and couldn’t wait to get into the bath.

  The door opened, and Jules looked out at her without expression.

  Claire gave him a big smile and pulled open the screen door. He didn’t step aside, so she pushed past him into the dim, cool interior.

  “Oh God, that’s better,” she said, letting her suitcase drop noisily. “It’s bright out there.” Finally she turned to face him. He was still standing by the door, though he had closed it. She gave him a big smile. “Hi, honey. I’m home!”

  Clio

  Marcel and Ouida stayed for dinner. He seemed shy and nervous, not big with the smiling. Now Claire was the only member of the Treize we hadn’t met. It was so weird, thinking about these people living in a tiny, old-world village together, knowing each other for hundreds of years. Really hard to wrap my mind around.

  They stayed up late with Nan, talking, while Thais and I went upstairs.

  “I’ve been dying to talk to you,” Thais said when we were brushing our teeth. She waved her toothbrush at me, mouth foaming like a rabid dog. “Number one, I think Marcel is the guy we saw standing over that woman in the swamp, when it looked like he’d killed her. In our vision.”

  It took me a moment to catch up to her train of thought. But it all came together and I nodded. “You’re totally right—I knew he looked familiar, and I couldn’t figure it out, but that’s it.”

  “And,” Thais continued, “I think that woman was Melita. And no matter how crazy this Melita woman was, does Marcel really seem like a guy who’d murder someone? So what if Melita wasn’t dead, the way she seemed in our vision and the way everyone else sort of assumes she is? What if she only looked dead, but she’s really still alive, and someone knows it, then maybe that someone is the someone who’s been trying to get rid of just one of us.” Thais looked at me expectantly, holding her toothbrush like a wand.

  I thought about it. She was right. The woman who had led the rite was the same one we’d seen fall in the swamp. It was also true that all of the attacks had happened to one of us at a time, except for the wasps. But maybe that had been aimed at Thais, and I’d only happened to get caught up in it by accident. I nodded slowly.

  “Maybe so. But you know, if Melita’s out there, then really, wouldn’t it make more sense if it’s Melita herself?” Thais and I stared at each other over the bathroom sink. “Like, she’s back for some reason,” I went on. “She knows Daedalus is about to do the rite, and she wants to lead it herself. So she’s trying to knock off one of us.”

  It seemed plausible, for about a minute. Then, at the same time, we shook our heads.

  “That seems too much, even for this completely screwed-up situation,” I admitted. “First of all, we’d have to be right that Melita’s even alive, and everyone seems to think she’s the one person who managed to actually die after that rite—along with Cerise, obviously. So, she’d have to be alive and just somehow have disappeared off the face of the planet for two hundred and fifty years.”

  “Then,” Thais jumped in, “she’d also have to have come back right at the same time I got here, figuring out that Daedalus wants to do the rite again and thinking she has to get rid of one of us to guarantee her spot. I mean, if she wanted to be a part of the rite before, why wouldn’t she have just shown up way earlier?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I mean, it’s possible . . . but it seems pretty out there. Way too many if’s.”

  Eyes narrowed, Thais said, “But we have to figure it out.”

  “We will soon,” I promised.

  In my room I lay awake, watching the shadows change on the walls. Thoughts careened around my brain like pinballs. By the time I heard Ouida and Marcel leave,
felt Nan and Thais drift off into sleep, I was both so tired and so wired that I felt like jumping out of my skin. Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer. Still lying in bed, I crafted a sleep spell, sending it out to waft through the house like the scent of a flower. It would coil around Thais and Nan like a comforting blanket, pressing them deeper into sleep, soothing their dreams, quieting any need to get up for a drink of water or anything. It was a lovely little spell that I’d found in one of Nan’s old books.

  Of course, if Nan or Thais ever found out I’d done it, they’d kill me. Using magick on anyone without their permission was about the biggest no-no there was in our religion. If someone did it to me, I’d want to take them apart. Yet here I was.

  I crept downstairs and past Nan’s closed door. In the workroom I gathered a few supplies, then let myself out into the darkness of the backyard. It still smelled like ash out here. I wondered how long it would.

  Out back, I went into the darkest area, by the brick wall that separated our yard from the empty lot behind us. Nan’s compost heap hid me from the house, which felt better, even with the sleep spell.

  Quickly and quietly I set up my circle, setting out power stones, filling our four cups, lighting incense. But there was so much on my mind, I kept doing things out of order, kept jumping at the slightest sound, knocked over the cup of water. I thought about seeing Luc yesterday at Botanika and wondered why I’d felt he was Richard, just for a second. And Richard—why had I kissed him, when Luc was the only one I wanted to kiss?

  They were both part of the Treize, this new entity that seemed to be taking over my life. Now Marcel was here and Claire probably was too. All of them were here in New Orleans—this city was like a cauldron, and the Treize was going to come to a boil very soon.

  I had to be ready for it—which was why I was out here.

  I had two goals: to have a protective spell in place for me and Thais and to control the power that the rite would create to make us immortal. Thais and I wouldn’t die. I was sure Thais would want it too, once I had convinced her. Immortal. Even the word sent shivers down my spine—the very thought of it. Going on forever. Learning more and more. A hundred years, two hundred. I smiled bitterly. Maybe in two hundred years things would work out between me and Luc and Thais. Maybe I could have him for the first hundred, and she could have him for—no.

  But I had the magick that would accomplish this.

  Finally I had everything in place. I opened the old grimoire I’d found at Botanika last night. There was a spell in here that Hermann Parfitte had described as “basic.”

  Feeling nervous, I reread it and made sure I had set everything up correctly. This was a spell to draw the power of others to you—the first step in learning how to control or subvert that power. I was going to start with smaller creatures, like bugs, and work my way up to humans.

  It was both terrifying and darkly thrilling, doing this. It went against everything I had been taught my whole life. It was among the most forbidden magick there was. And certainly, in the wrong hands, it could be evil beyond comprehension.

  But I wasn’t doing it for evil purposes. I was doing it to protect myself and my family. I was going to learn to do it before Daedalus used it on me—again.

  After a last look around at the darkened yard, the windows of the sleeping house, I closed my eyes, let my hands rest on my knees palms up, and concentrated. I let every muscle relax, from the top of my head to my smallest toe. I felt the tiny release of each one, my shoulders, my wrists, my neck. The boundaries between me and magick began to dissolve. I became part of the world, and the world was part of me. I never got tired of that joyful feeling of oneness with everything, where it all made sense, where everything seemed whole and complete and perfect just as it was. I didn’t know why it didn’t last once I came out of my trance—I only knew that it didn’t. In the regular world, colors were paler, sounds more discordant, emotions more jangled.

  I began to sing, very, very quietly, almost silently. The spell had been written in French so old I couldn’t translate half of it. I was praying there wasn’t an unsaid evil purpose beneath the words. I sang the spell and then sang my own song, which contained a whisper of my true name, which put me in context within the world. It called power to me, connected me to the power in all things: tree, rock, air. With my eyes closed, I drew sigils in the air, the ones described in the grimoire. This spell was strange in that it didn’t specify exactly what creature’s powers it would call to you. I assumed it would be insects or perhaps lizards or frogs.

  So when I opened my eyes and found six neighborhood cats and Q-Tip waiting patiently for me, I was shocked. Cats were mammals—higher, very complex beings compared to insects. They surrounded me, watching me even as they washed a paw or followed a wind-shaken leaf.

  “Cats,” I murmured, amazed. This was powerful magick. Q-Tip looked at me, wondering what I wanted. Ordinarily he would have chased strange cats out of the yard, so I knew without a doubt he was under my spell.

  The next part of the spell was to access the creatures’ power. I was scared—I had no idea what would happen and worried that doing this one spell, taking this one step, would somehow color me evil forever. Like it would take away any hope I had of general goodness. Not goody-two-shoes goodness, which, face it, I’d never had a lot of. But goodness in the sense of . . . lack of real badness.

  But the stakes were so high. My life. My sister’s life. Would it be better to be tainted dark forever but keep my free will or to be good but controlled by someone else?

  I closed my eyes again and murmured the words that would let me access the cats’ power. It wasn’t gradual, a slow, gentle twining of our spirits. It was sudden, shocking. Within seconds I felt their feline life forces standing all around me, animal sentinels in the darkness. They were alien, totally other, not like anything I’d ever felt, even during the wildest circle. Each cat was an unmistakable individual. Their energies were sharp and pointed, little clumps of crackling force; small, wild, and primitive. Even Q-Tip, my baby, who was about as domesticated as they come, felt like: animal. It was freaky in the extreme.

  Feeling shaken, I went on to step three: joining their energies to mine. I sang the third part of the spell, checking the words again in the grimoire, which was open in front of me. I sang the words that let my spirit glide out and encircle theirs one by one, as if I were a stream and they were bits of debris that I was picking up and carrying downstream with me. I sat quietly, feeling the joining. I began to assimilate them—I began to feel catlike.

  My eyes popped open. The seven cats were completely still, staring off at nothing. Totally under my power. I had taken their strength, their force, and they were diminished and hollowed because of it. I felt ashamed that I had done this to them. But I also felt an exhilaration: I was super-Clio, more than I had been, more than I had ever been. I felt bursting with life and power, and a dark and terrible joy rose up in me. Standing, I held my arms out, trying to encompass this hugeness, this surge of strength.

  And then I jumped. The strong feline power within me insisted on showing itself, and without thinking, I coiled my muscles. I crouched and jumped easily to the top of our seven-foot brick wall. Right to the top of it. I landed on my toes, arms out for balance, but felt solid and secure. I could do anything.

  Laughing aloud, feeling glorious, I raised my face to the sky. I saw differently, heard differently, tasted the air more powerfully. Every scent the air carried was distinct, clear, strong. The last of the blooming jasmine, the sweet olive, the roses in our neighbor’s garden. I smelled other animals, damp brick, green leaves and decaying plants and dirt. Everything tasted exciting, and my senses seemed close to overload. I was giddy with sensation, thrilled, with fierce anticipation about exploring the whole new world opened to me. Laughing, I spun in a surefooted circle on the eight-inch-wide wall. My night vision was amazing, and I gazed at everything, seeing every dark leaf, every swaying plant, every cricket in the grass, one crisp, clear snap
shot at a time.

  And I saw seven cats, still as stones, on the ground in my backyard.

  A sudden fear overtook me, an animal fear, unthinking, strong, violent. Were they dead? Had I killed them? If I’d killed them, I’d killed part of me—and worse, I’d become something that filled me with horror. Quickly I jumped down and touched Q-Tip’s fur, gleaming whitely in the very slight moonlight. He was alive. Alive, but not himself. And I understood with shame and crushing disappointment what I had done.

  I sat down again in my circle, trying to still my frantically beating heart. I didn’t want to lose this feeling, this incredible, exhilarating extra-ness. It would be so easy to just take it, take it and keep it, and not care about the consequences.

  But seventeen years of Nan’s teachings and examples were worn into me too deeply, and I was grateful. Her lessons gave me the strength to do what I might not have been able to do on my own. Closing my eyes, I chanted the fourth, last part of the spell, the one that would undo what I had put together. Even before I had finished saying the strange, ancient words, I felt the feline spirits leave me, felt myself becoming less. Less dimensional, less powerful. Flatter, completely human. Our energies flew apart from each other, and each cat came back to life, blinking, looking confused and startled and afraid.

  In an instant all the cats scattered. They associated this place with something ill, something they must escape from, and so they ran, slinking under fences, jumping over them, racing down our alley to the street. They were running away from me and what I had done.