Birthright (Residue Series #2)

by Laury Falter

  And again, I felt like I was violating their personal space.

  Maggie, thankfully, returned her attention to me. “I’ll ask him.”

  “I really appreciate it.”

  “I know,” she said, and I was confident my expression was showing it.

  For the rest of the day and throughout the evening, I couldn’t take my mind off what my father’s answer might be. During our midnight lesson, even Miss Celia’s diversionary, tactical driving, trying to lose the Vires, didn’t shake the interest away. Surprisingly, neither did the taunt of having Jameson so close and untouchable, as we entered the concealed room at the end of the barren hallway, or the seductive look in his eyes as we practiced channeling from several feet apart. I couldn’t even have cared less when Miss Mabelle and Miss Celia gave each other an astonished glance and announced Jameson and I would advance to the next lesson.

  It wasn’t until I saw Maggie’s face the next morning, as she entered our school’s main hallway, before first period that I felt my eagerness lessen. Her stark apprehension after seeing me made my eagerness disappear completely. Regardless, I continued my stroll to meet her and Eran just outside their classroom. Since they happened to be standing just beyond Jameson’s locker, he longingly watched me approach, only to grimace with defeat, as I moved by him.

  A large part of me fought not to take his hand and ask him to come with me.

  “Hi,” I said, aware that Jameson was still lingering at his locker behind me.

  Neither Maggie nor Eran seemed too enthusiastic to relay the information. Eran’s head remained facing down the hallway, which told me whatever my father said wasn’t all that good.

  “So?” I asked, already digging for my money to pay her and to subdue my rising panic.

  Maggie, who didn’t seem to follow any social norms, reached out and took my hands before saying a word. She leveled her gaze at me and said softly, “The man who killed your father is named Theleo Alesius.”

  I nodded, because I already knew his name but didn’t think I could muster the ability to tell her.

  She went on to describe the very same scenario of my father’s death that my mother retold and that Jameson had illustrated, leaving the bombshell for last.

  Maggie tightened her hold on my hands, pausing just long enough to evaluate me and make sure I was prepared to hear what she had to say. I guess it was because she said, “Your father doesn’t know if Theleo did it inadvertently or intentionally.”

  “Kill him, you mean?” I asked, clarifying. “He doesn’t know if Theleo meant to kill him?” That just seemed improbable to me.

  “No, he couldn’t be certain,” Maggie confirmed. “He was very clear on that point.”

  “Of course he meant to,” I scoffed, not comprehending how that could be misinterpreted by my father. “Theleo was his enemy.”

  Maggie sighed and revealed the very last possibility, one that never entered my mind. “From what your father said, you were mortally wounded during a kidnapping…your father was a healer…now, this is where it gets a little strange, but your father refused to explain it any further to me. Apparently, when Theleo killed your father, his ability to heal was passed to you…and you survived.”

  I sat, bewildered, struggling to understand. Recognizing this, Maggie summed it up for me.

  “Your father wasn’t certain of this, but…he believes that Theleo took your father’s life to save yours.”

  12 HISTORY

  I am the reason for my father’s death.

  He was sacrificed for me.

  He is dead because of me.

  I felt sick.

  Pain seared through my body. My pulse pounded in my ears, silencing all other sounds. My stomach constricted, cramping severely and forcing me to double over.

  “Breathe,” Maggie instructed, though it was muffled. I believe her hand was on my back too, attempting to comfort me.

  There was no hope of that happening.

  “Slow…deep breaths.”

  My lungs felt like they’d been doused in concrete and allowed to harden, becoming immobile and unnatural.

  “Breathe,” I heard the command again, gently coaxing. This time it came from Jameson. He was directly to my left now.

  Apparently, I’d collapsed to my knees, because his hands came under my arms and raised me to my feet. Unfortunately, my legs wouldn’t comply and stabilize below me. Instead, they drooped like feeble, useless masses weighting down my body. However, the act of expanding my torso gave me the span I needed to take in air.

  “Good,” Jameson cajoled, softly in my ear. “Keep that up.”

  By this time, my cousins were surrounding us, but Jameson refused to release me.

  A quick glance down the hall told me I was now the center of attention, and several Vires were watching us just a few feet away.

  Jameson was breaking the agreement we had to look at odds with each other and risking his safety to do it. This danger helped me summon the ability to compose myself. I extended my hand again, offering Maggie money, hoping to wrap this up quickly now that my awareness was back.

  It would definitely make my cousins and the rest of the Caldwells feel better.

  “Maybe she should go home for the day?” Eran suggested.

  “I’m fine,” I said, mustering enough energy to sound credible. “Really, I am.”

  They stared at me, seemingly unconvinced. For the sake of proof, I stepped forward and urged Maggie to take her payment.

  “Keep it,” she said. “You shouldn’t have to pay for that kind of news.”

  Eran’s arm came over her shoulders. “Absolutely not.”

  At that point, I thanked her and demonstrated further proof of my recovery by moving through my cousin’s and down the hall to my first class.

  I felt Jameson’s critical eyes glued to me the entire time.

  Truthfully, I didn’t feel all right. I felt ill and it wasn’t subsiding.

  In second period, Jameson glanced apprehensively in my direction several times, and I knew he was struggling not to ask about my pale complexion or my shaky hands, which others already noticed.

  He was still uneasy by the end of the day when he pulled to a stop amidst the mad rush of cars leaving school grounds. Being temporarily hidden by the Vires from between two lifted trucks, he leaned out the window and insisted on driving me home.

  I felt perfectly capable of driving myself – frozen in a surreal daze, yet, still alert enough to make it home – but my cousins and I have been sharing vehicles since the Vires came into the city, so I didn’t bring my car.

  Before I could even reject his proposal, he explained, “This is for you, Jocelyn. Not for me. I’ll keep my distance.”

  I wanted to be with Jameson. I needed him. No one else could comfort me the way he did. If he was true to his word, and kept away from me, maybe there was a chance my emotions wouldn’t get the best of me. Yeah, right…Against my better judgment, I slipped into his passenger’s seat and we darted from the parking lot.

  He didn’t badger me with questions about how I was dealing with the news from this morning, but I had the feeling he was keeping part of his attention on the road and part of it on me. I couldn’t be certain, because my eyelids fell a few minutes into the drive, giving way to the exhaustion that can only come from a broken heart.

  Eventually, he came to a stop and urged, “Open your eyes.”

  I did and found myself staring at a hospital emergency room sign.

  Immediately, the tears I’d repressed, barricaded behind my eyelids for most of the day, came rapid and intense.

  The guilt I was incessantly battling, for taking my father’s life, slowly waned with the promise of healing another. Jameson knew this, and for that reason, he brought me here.

  Jameson’s arms embraced my shoulders across the console; his warmth was so inviting it chased away my guilt in accepting it. My fingers gripped his shirt, pulling him to me, clutching his muscular back. I couldn’t seem to get en
ough of him close enough to me.

  He knew me, really understood me, and he was very likely the only one who did. It wasn’t fair that we couldn’t be together. It wasn’t fair that our fate set us up for failure. We were meant to be together. It was these reasons that kept me from letting go of him sooner.

  Once I did, we spent the next several hours healing others, traveling from one location to the next, until it was nearly midnight and our next lesson was about to begin.

  In an effort to hide the fact that Jameson and I were arriving together, I laid down in the back seat as he stopped outside the Caldwell residence. Around that time, I began to wonder what ailment, pain, or torturous lesson would be inflicted on us tonight. From the moment I heard Miss Celia’s voice, after she took her place behind the wheel, and Jameson slipped into the back of the car, I mentally prepared for it, as best as I possibly could.

  “Evenin’, Jocelyn,” said Miss Celia in such a way that I knew she expected me to be hidden inside the car.

  “Hello, Miss Celia,” was all I had time to reply before my body rolled swiftly against the seat as Miss Celia shot away from the curb.

  She used her typically evasive driving maneuvers to lose the Vires following us from the Caldwell residence, and stopped at Aunt Lizzy’s house only after Jameson assured her she’d lost them.

  When we did, I gave in to the urge to peek out the window at the space below the tree at Aunt Lizzy’s gate. Theleo wasn’t there in his usual position. In fact, he’d been suspiciously absent recently. Good riddance, I thought, sinking back down as Miss Mabelle climbed into her usual seat in the front.

  Miss Celia took a different route tonight, driving right through abandoned warehouses and along streets with no lights. It was obvious she had mapped out her trip well in advance.

  When Miss Mabelle verified that we’d lost the Vires, Jameson and I sat up, finding that we’d entered the French Quarter. She took Chartres Street until reaching the corner of Barracks. There, she pulled to a stop directly in the middle of the street and turned off her headlights.

  “Umm,” I mumbled. “What happens when a car comes?”

  Miss Mabelle shushed me, so we remained in our seats staring through the windshield as she turned off the heater and, when that wasn’t good enough, the engine.

  Directly in front of us, facing Chartres Street were two-story brick buildings with iron banister balconies held up by metal posts planted in the concrete sidewalk.

  When no one spoke, I announced, “I have no idea what we’re supposed to be looking at.”

  Quietly, Miss Mabelle began to speak then.

  “Yellow fever hit this city in the summer of 1796. It was the first of many outbreaks here that would span hundreds of years, some of which became full blown epidemics. It was known as the Black Vomit back then, because it would occur in the final stages of death. Starting as a fever, it progressed through a fit of chills leading to a quickened pulse, hot skin, pains in the head, and enflamed eyes. Finally, black vomiting, hemorrhages, and coma would set in.

  “Cemeteries couldn’t keep up with the growing number of dead, so coffins were piled at the gate while laborers dug trenches for them and in preparation of the coming dead. When coffins ran out, bodies were piled up on the streets here,” she motioned in front of us, “and here,” she motioned down the street at our side.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” I asked, because I’d heard enough.

  “For the reason that every epidemic started with a friend of the Weatherfords or the Caldwells.”

  Miss Mabelle filled in from there. “At various times in history, the Vires have used numerous means to reach your families, attempting to destroy or abate their lineage. Yellow fever was one of those instances. While they no longer use this particular method here, you will still find it elsewhere in the world.”

  “Wherever a Caldwell or a Weatherford resides,” added Miss Celia.

  “Jocelyn’s a healer so…I’m not clear on why we need to know this,” said Jameson, glancing between the two of them.

  “We aren’t done yet,” Miss Mabelle’s reply was simple, as she started the engine and took off down the street.

  She turned around, finding St. Peter Street, and parked. They told Jameson and me to stay in our seats, so we looked in the direction they were staring and found an aged, weather-beaten building across the street, tucked so close to the other buildings that a flat hand couldn’t fit between them on either side.

  Seasons of rain left streaks down its slats and removed its original color so that smudges of red, purple, and green blended against the front façade and gave it an intriguing quality. A second-story balcony stretched the entire length, with three slender doors and a commonplace banister. Below, on the first floor, were two sets of barn doors with diamond cut outs at the top of each. I figure this must have been a detail of refinement during the time it was built. To the right was a metal gate leading down a carriage way. And hitching posts, to tie horses to, still stood ever few feet along the front and down most of the street.

  “Concerts end at eleven,” Jameson said, hinting at why we were parked here.

  I was curiously waiting for their response, when Miss Mabelle sighed to herself and asked Miss Celia, “Would you like to take this one?”

  Her answer was insistent, “No, no. It’s your family who performed here. You go right ahead.”

  Miss Mabelle paused to stare out the window again, in a seemingly personal moment of reflection, before speaking.

  “This is where it all started, the first public clash between the Caldwells and the Weatherfords.”

  Suddenly, the anonymous building held meaning to me, and I took a closer look, noticing the elaborate metal work on the gate and the banding around its roof.

  “Do either of you know how it started?” asked Miss Mabelle. It was a simple enough question, but I felt contrite for not having the answer. The side of Jameson’s mouth turned down in a frown, so it was clear he didn’t want to be tested on it either. “The Sevens had been trying to destroy your families long before this event, but they grew tired of trying to do so inconspicuously. Quite a bit of forethought and perfect execution is required for something of that magnitude. So, one of The Sevens came up with the brilliant plan to hand the job over to your two families.

  “Of course, there was no legitimate reason to start a feud, when only peaceful relations existed. In fact, your ancestors sat inside that very building, sipping on imported liquor, no more than a chair away from each other, yet there was never an unkind word spoken between them. Then, came the case of mistaken identity. A Caldwell walked into the tavern one night and put a knife through the heart of a Weatherford.”

  “Why?” I asked, stiffly.

  “Because the evening prior, a man wearing a Weatherford family stone took the life of a Caldwell. Unprovoked. Unwarranted. And back then, eye-for-an-eye, vigilante justice was common. Does anyone want to venture a guess as to who that man might have been?”

  “A Vire,” mumbled Jameson.

  “No. I’ll give you a hint. His surname was Sartorius.”

  “Sartorius,” whispered Jameson, strangely. “Where did I hear that-” Abruptly, it came to him and he drew in a sharp breath.

  I, however, recognized the name the moment it rolled off Miss Mabelle’s lips.

  “It was one of my grandfathers.”

  “Yes, it was, Jocelyn.”

  Jameson sighed in frustration and said to Miss Mabelle, using such a demanding tone she turned halfway in her seat, “Why are you taking us through all this?”

  “We aren’t done yet,” Miss Celia replied, stepping on the gas pedal, once again throwing us back in our seats.

  She took us back through the French Quarter. While she kept to the more vacant streets, I caught sight of inebriated bar patrons and the neon signs summoning them in before she pulled up to a side street beside Jackson Square.

  “This time we get out and walk,” Miss Mabelle stated, indicating she
already knew where we were headed.

  Jameson and I trailed them, covering only a few yards and turning down an alley, rutted and paved with uneven stones. It was nestled between the St. Louis Cathedral and a brick building, which housed a bar and a row of apartments on the second balcony. It was December and well past midnight so the night air was bitterly cold and our warm breaths wafted up through the still air between us.

  With only a single lamppost at the street, and a few dim lights along the remaining thirty yards, it didn’t feel all that welcoming. The dampness that blanketed the space, reflecting shadows, didn’t help to improve its peculiar character.

  “This hea is Pirate’s Alley,” said Miss Celia, reviving her accent now that we were back in public. “Known mostly fo’ the unexplainable, supernatural stuff.”

  “And fo’ Mista’ William Faulkna’,” insisted Miss Mabelle.

  “That’s right,” agreed Miss Celia with a nod. “But what ya don’t know is that right up thea…” she pointed to a darkened window on the second floor of the building to our left, “…is where yer two families tried to make peace by signin’ an accord back in 1899. But peace just weren’t meant to be. A single man saw ta that. Came inta the room and killed everyone in it, making it look like a duel broke out between the parties.”

  My eyes locked on the window, as I was sure Jameson’s were to. Whoever lived there now had their curtains drawn. They were probably firmly asleep with no knowledge that outside, looking up at their home, were relatives of two families who had been unconscionably murdered there over a hundred years ago while trying to prevent the very end they came to suffer: a needless death.

  “Weren’t a single ounce of hope fo’ peace afta’ that,” said Miss Celia with a sad click of her tongue. She leveled her eyes at Jameson and me. “Not befo’ you two. You two…you is the glue.”

  With that, Miss Mabelle whirled around and strode back to the car, calling over her shoulder at us with a beckoning whistle. Next, she took us down to the riverfront, parked on Bienville Street, and led us to the brick jogging path along the Mississippi River.

  “Woldenberg Park?” Jameson asked, as I stepped up to the metal guardrails overlooking the water. From behind, the sounds of the city drifted away and the slapping of the water engulfed us. Shrouded in light from the traditional lampposts lining the path, I could see the water for a few yards, but then it disappeared into the darkness. I found Jameson at my side within seconds.