Most Americans think of burial as forever. In New Orleans, not so much. Our cemeteries are crowded places because of that whole water table thing. The Flournoy mausoleum is one of the larger ones, but it only contains space for six caskets, in three rows of two. Each niche is sealed with brick and mortar and then faced with a square marble plaque bearing the names of the family members who have rested there, along with their birth and death years.
The mausoleum is more like a hotel than an eternal home: when someone new checks in, someone else has to check out. Their casket is discreetly removed, and the body is cremated and moved to the big communal urns on either side of the door to make space for the latest arrival. The minimum stay, following ancient tradition in similar European and Middle East cemeteries, is a year and a day, but our family is small. Some ancestors have rested in their coffins for decades before their ashes are mingled with those of their ancestors.
In Marie-Eglise's case, it was even more temporary. Daisy and I were told, after the fact, that Hazel had requested that the funeral home cremate Marie-Eglise's body as soon as the coroner returned it. My mother was sure that this was not a natural death, and that meant that the murderer might still be looking to acquire Marie-Eglise's property and power. Grave robbing is a time-honored profession even in non-magical families. We were horrified at first, but she was right, of course. So, while the second line for Marie-Eglise's funeral danced past the house on Royal Street, our grandmother was already ensconced on the parlor mantel in her favorite teapot.
♦
It wasn't until my mother and Daisy were choosing Marie-Eglise's burial clothes that they realized that her tortoiseshell comb was missing.
I had never seen Marie-Eglise without that comb. It was the first thing she put on in the morning, standing in her dressing gown in front of her mirror; it was the last thing she took off at night. She kept it on a starched crocheted doily on the bureau next to her bed so she could see it if she awoke during the night. It gave her comfort.
No one in the family would have dared to take it – but someone had.
Marie-Eglise was wearing the comb when she died. Wasn't she? The only people in the room when Marie-Eglise was found collapsed were my mother and Aaron, and of course the paramedics later. Neither Hazel nor Aaron could remember specifically seeing it, but they weren't looking for, either. It was just something she always wore. The paramedics would have had no idea of its true value. It wasn't in the bag of clothing that came back from the hospital.
My mother hadn’t taken the comb, or she wouldn’t still be frantically looking for it; she’s not that good of an actress. That left Aaron.
The comb had to have disappeared during the time between the time that Marie-Eglise left the shop at three and my mother found her at four. So, where was Aaron during that hour?
Daisy had the answer: Facebook. "He puts his whole life on that thing," she said to me when my mother and Aaron were out of earshot.
She was right. There was nothing on Aaron’s personal feed, but the answer was on the page he had set up for his walking tour business. It was full of selfies of tourists in cheap pirate hats, timestamped right through the hour in question.
So it wasn’t Aaron, which means he probably didn’t have anything to do with John’s death, either. I was glad that Aaron had been exonerated, and a little guilty that I had ever suspected him. Still, it was a frustrating dead-end.
I was going through Marie-Eglise's bureau one last time, on the theory that that comb had to be here somewhere, what I heard soft footsteps behind me. I turned and saw a raggedy orange cat.
"Françoise," I said.
I was sure that I saw the cat wince. "Please!" he said. "Your accent is abominable."
You have got to be kidding me. Since when does Marie-Eglise’s familiar talk to me?
Chapter Six
Françoise was the second familiar I had known Marie-Eglise to have during my lifetime. The first was a prissy white Persian named Fifi. My grandmother told her everything, and apparently got good advice in response – at least I assume so since the only one who can hear the voice of a familiar is the witch to whom it is pledged. As a teenager, I was often mortified to come home and find my grandmother sitting on the front gallery, having a one-sided conversation with Fifi to the great amusement of the tourists below.
Fifi and my grandmother shared a deep bond, but we children gave that cat plenty of space. She was a nasty-tempered prima donna who bit me if I came too close. None of the other family members kept familiars in the New Orleans house – unless, of course, you counted great uncle Otto's conversations with the house mice – and I swore, with the conviction that only a teenager can muster, I would never allow an animal to pledge itself to me.
Fifi passed in her sleep at the ripe old age of 26. Marie-Eglise's grief was deep: not just for her cat and her familiar, but for the connections the cat evoked to my late grandfather and the childhoods of my mother and aunt.
The family held a funeral, of sorts, for Fifi. Her body was wrapped in my grandmother's favorite shawl and placed with her predecessors in the family crypt, in a special onyx box engraved with the image of Bastet. There was no first line on the way home from the cemetery. Marie-Eglise just wasn't in the mood, and none of the rest of us thought that the passing of that nasty old cat was much of a tragedy.
When we got back to the house on Royal Street, there was a cat on the doorstep.
I knew this guy. He was a stray. I'd seen him around the neighborhood, looking for a handout near the seafood restaurants and oyster bars. He was your basic orange tabby, streetwise and scruffy. The tip of one ear was missing, and he had a ragged scar on the other. He absolutely was not Fifi.
I remember how my grandmother stopped cold in her tracks as she stepped toward the door. She appeared to be listening to something that none of the rest of us could hear. Then, to our great astonishment, she said to the cat: "Yes, of course. Please come in."
Marie-Eglise, a snooty Francophile even though she had never herself set foot outside of Louisiana, named the cat Françoise. From that day on, he was her constant companion. He had no other purpose; he was not a mouser, and I never once saw him join his mistress in instructing the younger generation. He was there for Marie-Eglise, and he just ignored the rest of us.
Now, with Marie-Eglise gone, Françoise was speaking to me.
"I don't want a familiar," I said to him. I saw my mother's head whip around as she understood what was happening.
"I'm not a familiar," he said. "I'm a cat." He shook his head a little and scratched his ear with his hind foot. "Apparently, I'm your cat. Trust me, madam, I am appalled as you are."
Now I was the one shaking my head. "I can't have a cat. I'm getting ready to move out of state."
My mother glared at me. She'd been fighting me on the idea ever since John had casually mentioned at supper two nights before his death that he was considering a job at a paper in Arizona. He was excited by the idea of covering the spring training baseball league, and I was looking forward to putting a little distance between myself and my loving family.
Françoise fixed me with his unblinking gold eyes. "They have cats in Arizona."
"I don't want a cat."
"Madam, you have a cat. We'll work it out."
My mother was getting more upset by the minute. She'd always assumed that, as the new family matriarch, she would inherit Marie-Eglise's familiar. "Is Françoise speaking to you?"
I could've sworn he made that face again. "I take it you're not thrilled with your name?"
If he could've rolled his eyes, he would have. "Françoise is a feminine appellation." He had quite a vocabulary on him for an alley cat.
I was about to breach etiquette, big time. In my world, it was impolite – and sometimes dangerous – to ask someone's true name. I took a breath and asked, "What do you prefer?"
He didn't hesitate. "Francis. Frank will be fine."
I snorted through my nose.
"That's it? Frank?"
He drew himself up, planting his feet primly in front of him and wrapping his tail over them. "My family has been in Louisiana longer than yours. My ancestors came over from France as below-decks granary guards in the privateer fleets. We were with Jean Lafitte at the Battle of New Orleans."
"So your people chased mice on pirate ships." I couldn't hide the smirk.
"Privateers," he corrected me.
You say potato. This guy was as snooty as Marie-Eglise. No wonder they got along so well. "I think you've made a mistake here," I said to the cat. "You should be speaking to my mother."
"I don't like your mother," Frank said.
My mother was getting impatient. "What's he saying to you?" she whispered.
I shook her off. There was no way I was going to relay that cat's answer.
"My family has been pledged to yours for uncounted generations. I am the seventh son of a seventh son, all the way back to Paris, and we knew your family on the banks of the Seine. I will serve you well."
He looked me in the eye, awaiting my answer. I stood my ground.
"I understand that you are reluctant to take up this relationship," Frank said. That was the understatement of the year, I thought, but he continued. "Nevertheless, we need to speak in private. Join me at bedtime in your grandmother's sitting room." He interrupted before I could respond. "I need to tell you how your husband died."
Chapter Seven
Frank got right to the point. "It was Adam."
"We know that. Aaron..."
"No." Frank was emphatic. "Adam. I was there."
I felt my jaw drop open. "What do you mean, you were there?"
Frank looked smug. "I was snoozing on the staircase when he did it. With all your powers, you people aren't very observant."
He was right. Frank was off my radar, and I had to admit that there had been plenty of times when I hadn't realized that he was in the room until he moved or made a noise that drew my attention.
"So, what did you see?" I asked.
Frank explained how Adam had stood in the foyer and mumbled at the door for a long time. Since we all knew that Adam had no talent for the craft, he thought it was odd. But then, he thought a lot of what the humans in this household did was odd.
"And you didn't think to mention this to Marie-Eglise?"
"I don't gossip."
"But she could have stopped him."
"How? There was no proof except for my word, which only she could hear. And, I have to admit, at the time I didn't understand exactly what he was doing. He's been tinkering around here for years, trying out different spells and potions. I just thought it was more of the same." I got the cat equivalent of a shrug. "Humans move in mysterious ways. I had no reason to suspect it was anything other than the usual family intrigue. There's certainly enough of that around here."
"I can't believe you didn't tell me this before."
Frank gave me the cat squint. "I couldn't. We were not yet on speaking terms."
He was right. At the time that John was murdered, Frank was still Marie-Eglise's familiar.
I absently petted the soft fur between Frank's ears and was rewarded with a gravelly purr. Really? I could swear he was almost smiling.
"You understand about the mark on my forehead?" he whispered.
I didn't. Frank explained that there was a legend among medieval peasants that, on the night Jesus was born, an orange tabby crawled into his manger cradle to protect him as he slept. In gratitude, his mother Mary stroked the cat's forehead, and the blessing of her touch left her monogram in his fur.
"That's quite a tale," I said.
"No, the tail is on the other end," Frank quipped. He was suddenly serious. "I tell you this fable so that you will understand the esteem in which my kind has always been held."
I raised my eyebrows. "Meaning?"
"Meaning," he said, "you can trust me."
The jury was still out on that one.
Frank drew a deep breath. "There's more. I saw him kill my mistress."
What?
"My mistress was weary,” Frank said. “Losing your John broke her heart; she seemed to have lost part of her joy."
I shared the feeling, and I knew that Marie-Eglise had loved John as if he was her own grandson.
Frank looked forlorn. "I sat in her lap for a long time that last evening. I had encouraged her to have an extra nightcap to help her sleep, and I think maybe she added a little magical spice of her own," Frank said. "She was dozing in and out when Adam stepped out of the wardrobe. She wasn't even startled. I suspect she knew he was there all the time. She just gave him that sweet knowing smile she had, and held out her hand to him."
Frank pursed his lips. I didn't know a cat could do that. "And then he killed her."
I suppressed a gasp. "How?"
"I don't always understand your magic, but I can tell you the physicality of it. Instead of taking her hand like she wanted, he held his own hands above her chest, just so." Frank stood on his hind legs and extended his front paws out in front of his body. I nodded, and he sat primly again on his haunches. "I suppose we can be thankful that it was quick. She appeared to just fall asleep. He didn't even kiss her goodbye. He just turned on his heel and left."
"But how can that be true?" I asked. "Adam doesn't have any power! He says awful things about the ordinaries, but he's almost an ordinary himself."
Frank considered for a moment. "I believe you are without some critical information. Let me take a moment to enlighten you. Please have a seat – this could take a while."
I poured myself a brandy and settled into Marie-Eglise's chair.
"As you know," Frank began, "your cousins were just finishing high school when I joined your family. Aaron was always most pleasant to me."
I nodded. I remembered seeing my younger cousin sitting on the front gallery, thoughtfully stroking Frank as he watched the traffic and dreamed of the places he'd go when he grew up.
"The older brother," Frank was saying, "always kept his distance. At first, I believed he might be allergic – some people are, you know, and I try to be considerate. Later, I thought perhaps he just didn't care for cats." Frank sniffed at the impossibility of that.
"Eventually, I came to believe that he was staying away from me because he didn't want me to understand that he was not as he seemed."
I leaned forward in my chair. "How so?"
"Adam was the most powerful witch in this house except for your grandmother. And now that she's gone..."
There was absolutely no way. "You must be mistaken. I grew up with those boys, and I never saw any sign of that. Adam could barely tie his shoelaces, let alone work a complex spell."
"Do you remember the nightmares you had around Christmas time, the year you graduated from college?"
Boy, did I remember. I'd been under a lot of pressure, nailing down my grad school application and trying to juggle my undergrad studies, a nasty case of the flu and an inpatient new boyfriend. I wasn't handling any of it very well, and the stress had manifested itself in my sleep with nightmares of drowning in a dark place.
"That was Adam. I found him standing at the foot of your bed, chanting."
It was a horrifying idea, made all the worse because I didn't remember ever doing anything to inspire such an attack. "But why?" I whined.
"I believe it was because you were too busy to take him Christmas shopping. He thought you were ignoring him."
I was outraged. "And you did not tell all this to my grandmother?"
"It was none of my business."
"But you were her familiar."
"Exactly," said Frank. "I was her familiar. My job was to protect Marie-Eglise, and I failed. Beyond that, it was not my role to take sides. I apologize for your discomfort."
I really wanted to tell him off, to punish him for allowing me to be tormented. But he was right. As my grandmother's familiar, it was none of his business.
I sat with it for a moment. Adam, with no pow
er and no place in the family, had killed our grandmother. But that wasn't true, was it? Adam clearly had power. I, along with the rest of my people, had denied Adam his place, and it had cost me two of the people dearest to me.
"We have to stop him," I finally said.
"All we have to do is tell them," Frank said.
"There is no we," I said, frustrated. "I'm the only one who can hear you, remember?"
Frank twitched his tail in dismissal.
"This is all going to be on me. I need to find evidence that Adam did this."
"For the police," Frank said.
"Absolutely not," I said. "There is no way my mother will allow police to poke around in this building. Can you imagine what would happen if they decided they needed to take a look inside the shop? As far as they know, it's just another apartment."
I could tell Frank was starting to get it.
"As far as the ordinary world is concerned, Marie-Eglise died of a heart attack, and we need to leave it that way,” I said. “The family will handle it. But I still need proof. You said that you saw Adam working some sort of incantation?"
"That is what I said." Frank sounded pretty positive.
"And you are sure it wasn't Aaron? They do look quite a bit like, and given the problems with interspecies facial recognition..."
"It was Adam." Frank's voice was steel. "He stood right over there." Frank was looking at the tall wardrobe covered in the corner. "He waited inside for her. She never knew he was there."
I pictured Adam's huge frame squeezed into the narrow wardrobe.
"I was under the bureau, waiting for her to finish her cordial so I could join her on her lap. I'm sure your cousin had no idea I was there. I'm afraid I was dozing off. I feel no small amount of guilt for it – I keep thinking that there should have been something I could have done to stop him. But by the time I realized that he was mumbling an incantation, it was too late."
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