by Beth Byers
“It’s not my fault,” Severine told the dog. “It’s not my fault that I have dark hair and eyes. It’s not my fault that I’m not effusive and shallow. It’s not my fault that she didn’t love me.”
Anubis huffed and then flopped down, his gaze on her.
“She didn’t love anyone,” Severine added, “not even herself.”
Persephone whined again, and Severine picked up a black day dress. It was sleeveless, cut to her body, and made her look like the lush, exotic version of a bright young thing. She added cosmetics, taking special care to put them on as she liked them rather than how Mother had worn them.
She finished with the long strand of Tahitian pearls that Father had purchased for her. A white gold tag hung from the clasp, and it had been engraved, For my dark flower, Sevie. As she finished dressing, she refused to think of anything other than where a hidden cache could be.
As Severine finished with her shoes, another memory struck her. Father had once had the master suite redone while Severine had been at school. In the process, the location of the closets had changed, and Flora had complained bitterly about a smaller space but Father had only mocked her.
Severine rose. Her memories had assaulted her far more deeply than the bruises she’d attained, but she crossed to the master suite, into her father’s closet, shoving aside clothes that no one had bothered to remove.
There, at the back of his closet, was the lock. She pulled the key from her bodice and unlocked it.
Nothing happened. She frowned and threw his clothes aside. She tried the key again, but no. It was right. She had unlocked it. Severine put her hands on the wood-paneled wall and tried to shove. They didn’t fold in, but there was the barest of movements. Severine ran her fingers over the panels again, cursing the lack of light in the closet.
She moved by feel and found it then. The seam in the wood paneling that had edged apart the slightest bit. She gasped and dug her nails into that seam and pulled. The panels rolled back easily but she was entirely unable to see anything.
Severine ran down the stairs and found a lightbulb. Chantae had risen and was making eggs, bacon, and biscuits in the kitchen while Chantae’s mother kneaded bread at the counter.
“Good morning,” Severine called as she grabbed the lightbulb and darted back up the stairs, chased by Anubis. Severine grabbed a wooden chair from the hallway and dragged it into Father’s over-sized closet. She hopped onto the chair and struggled to replace the lightbulb. After long enough to be shameful, light filled the closet, and Severine gaped.
On the floor were the remains of her father’s wardrobe. The wood paneling from the floor to her waist were just as you would expect. At halfway up the wall, however, the closet paneling rolled back to show a compartment that was, perhaps, four feet wide, three feet tall and no more than a foot deep. The compartment was lined with shelves.
This was not what had her gaping. Massive stacks of currency were hidden behind the panels. At least three stacks of green bills bound with rubber bands. She lifted just one bundle off of the first stack and flipped through it, seeing hundred dollar bills. Severine had no doubt that this money wasn’t earned in a decent manner.
She pressed her hand against her chest and then closed the closet door.
“Anubis, ruhig.”
The command to be silent was followed by one to guard.
“Anubis, beschützen.”
His gaze focused on her, and his alert eyes ranged the small space while his ears perked in concentration. She lifted a quite heavy burlap sack and found three gold bricks. Her mouth dropped open, and she took the accounting books, a stack of letters tied together, and a small black notebook. How many times had she seen that very notebook or one like it in her father’s pocket?
Severine took the books with shaking hands, sick to her stomach, and carefully closed the panels, locked them, replaced her father’s clothes in front of the panel. And then for good measure, she replaced the good bulb with the burnt out one, using one of her father’s cravats to unscrew the hot bulb.
She changed the overhead light of her father’s bedroom. Father had a safe in his bedroom that had been empty for some time. Severine frowned deeply as she placed the books inside it and then replaced the painting over the safe.
As she returned the wooden chair to the hallway, Lisette stepped out of her own room.
“Morning, sunshine,” Lisette said cheerily. “Feeling better?”
Severine silently nodded and then hated herself as she asked, “Doesn’t that smell good?” She didn’t like the fear that drove her to keep her secret from her friends.
“Bacon and eggs always smells good, cher,” Lisette replied. Her gaze moved over Severine’s face. “Are you all right? You look pale under that rouge.”
Severine rubbed her brow as she said truthfully, “Bad memories and a headache. I just remembered that Father had a safe in his room. I found some letters, two of those impossible-to-read accounting books like Grantley had, and a notebook Father used to carry.”
Lisette gasped. Her wide smile and bright eyes made Severine feel like the world’s worst friend, especially when Lisette asked, “Have you read anything yet?”
“I left it in the safe,” Severine said, not lying at that moment and yet feeling as though she were succumbing to the devil to hide anything from Lisette, who had been nothing but helpful. “I thought it might be better to pretend we know nothing in case your old friend is still watching us.”
Lisette’s brows lifted and Severine quickly added, “Also, I know I’m not thinking very clearly and I thought I’d better eat and return to myself before I made any bigger choices. It’s like…every step I take deeper into this mystery makes me feel like I should hate him.”
“It’s all right that you don’t hate your father, Sev. He was your father and from the few things you’ve said, the only one who was kind to you until Brand and the nuns showed up.”
“I would give up a fortune to speak to them today,” Severine said.
Lisette reached out gently. “Perhaps you’d find some comfort speaking to a priest?”
Severine paused, considering, and finally confessed her fear. “I feel like I’ll become like my parents if I’m not careful.”
“They weren’t inherently bad,” Lisette told her as they left the hallway and made their way down to the dining room. They’d already been invaded by the gents next door, so Lisette whispered before they joined them. “You aren’t bad, Sev. And you’ll continue to avoid such a fate every time you make a choice to be kind, to do good instead of evil, to—excuse me while I channel my granny here—but sow peace rather than discord.”
Severine nodded because there was nothing else to do, and then they joined the others.
Mr. Brand was fixed on Severine with a steadiness that told her he didn’t believe one bit of her story. Not while they ate the breakfast Chantae made. Not while they returned the books to the shelves in the library. Not when Thorne and Oliver left to hire several private detectives. Mr. Brand didn’t believe Severine’s story when Lisette went to help her grandmother in her bedroom.
Severine met his gaze, and he met hers.
“You saw inside the bedroom safe already?” she guessed.
“I cleaned it out after your parents died.” They looked at each other for long minutes and then Mr. Brand said, “You don’t have to tell me.”
“It wasn’t good.”
“So I gathered.”
“I’m not ready.”
He nodded. “When you are, I’m here for you, Sev.”
She tried to smile, but she couldn’t quite do it. Instead she nodded again. “What did he do? That saved your life? That made you friends?”
Mr. Brand met her eyes. “He had come to visit where I was stationed during the war. I was young, useless, and stupid. We were attacked, and I should have died, but he shoved me out of the way.”
“So you lived?”
“I lived, but I was pretty badly hurt. I got sent h
ome, and he saw me through college when I should have been dead. Then he gave me a job. I would have done anything for him. Anything, Severine. But all he asked of me was to protect his daughter if he could not.”
Severine wished her heart were touched, but it wasn’t. There had been too many bad memories that morning. Too much pain before she’d found all that evidence of her father’s villainy. Normal people didn’t have coded accounting books and stacks of money. Good people didn’t. Normal, good people weren’t murdered at a house party.
Normal, good people didn’t need to ask near-strangers to look after their child because no one close to them was trustworthy. Normal, good people didn’t live the life Lukas DuNoir had lived, and even though she hadn’t committed any of his crimes, she felt as though she was carrying the burden of all his sins.
“I don’t know how to be his daughter.”
“It isn’t a thing you do any particular way, Severine.” Mr. Brand’s gentle voice was not comforting.
She rubbed her dog’s head and ears and wished that she didn’t feel a darkness in her chest. Slowly she breathed in. “Do you know what Sister Mary Chastity told me was the most important?”
He shook his head.
“Kindness.”
He just waited.
Severine explained, “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.’ I told her I didn’t know if I believed in God.”
“Don’t you?”
Severine shrugged, playing with the cross that she’d put on underneath her dress. She pulled it out and held it, looking down at the emblem of the son of God’s death rather than explaining her conflicted feelings. Her belief and her lack thereof. Her desire to shake her fist at the heavens and demand why her, while knowing she had been so very lucky.
Severine ignored all of that and answered, “She promised me that God would give me the time to come to know Him. In the meantime, she said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Then she suggested kindness.”
“Kindness is a good choice, Severine.”
It was a good choice, but was it enough?
Chapter 19
“What if we use one of those private investigators to follow Landon Gentry?”
Lisette gasped but it was her mother, Chantae, who said, “That’s a good way to get a man killed.”
Severine blinked. “Killed?”
“Landon wasn’t a good boy, and he is a worse man. If I’m ever struck down, it was him who killed me, and I was a second mother to him when he was a boy,” Chantae said firmly. “My girl loved him, and I was stupid enough to hope that he’d be better.”
“He never was,” Mr. Brand finished.
Both Chantae and Lisette nodded.
“What if we approach Cocotte again?” Severine suggested.
“She’s not going to say a word if Landon Gentry saw you leaving her.” Chantae was the one who answered again while Lisette silently traced her finger over the table. “Cocotte lands on her feet. As long as Landon has his gaze on her, she’ll never speak or help.”
“I could offer more money.”
“You can’t spend money if you’re dead,” Chantae replied, ruining that idea before it could do more than pass from Severine’s mouth to the grave.
“The question,” Severine said, rubbing her brow to soothe the headache she couldn’t quite shake, “is what changed?”
“What do you mean, cher?” Chantae asked as Severine ran her cross along its chain.
“I mean that my father has been dead for years. So has Antoine Grantley. Why are they bothering his widow now? What are they looking for? Why is this Gentry fellow focused on me when he shouldn’t even know who I am? Surely it can’t have anything to do with me?”
“It could be the questions I’ve been asking since you’ve been home,” Mr. Brand said with the same exhaustion Severine felt. “Or it could be something else. Something that is separate from you, but you matter now.”
“Like what?” Lisette demanded.
“Well.” Mr. Brand cleared his throat. “There’s every evidence that supposedly upstanding men like Lukas DuNoir and Antoine Grantley were part of a conspiracy. Perhaps it is as simple as a break in leadership.”
“So it doesn’t have anything to do with Severine? But Andre—” Lisette began.
“Yes, but when did Andre end up under that man’s thumb? Recently or years ago? We don’t really know, do we?”
Severine’s head tilted as she considered. “If Andre has been this person’s man for a while, it has more to do with his connections than with me. Or me alone.”
“It wouldn’t be you, though, Severine,” Lisette said. “It would be your father. Perhaps they tried something with Mr. Brand, failed, and then turned their attention to Andre because he was the next closest man to your father. Someone who might have access to the hidden office at the big mansion or the safe here.”
Severine ignored the stab of guilt at the evidence of her lie and focused on the last bit. Outside of herself and Andre, who else would have had a chance at the hiding places Severine had found since returning to New Orleans?
She glanced at the others. “They all seem to be quite wealthy regardless of whatever else was happening. What if they weren’t looking specifically for money?”
“Then they were still looking for something valuable,” Mr. Brand guessed. “Something that money couldn’t buy.”
“Something,” Severine started to say, priceless, but for the sort of insanely rich people like her father, priceless things were status symbols. Expensive collections were intended to show that he’d reached a level of money that outstripped others, but they all had their little things. The jewel that had supposedly once belonged to Napoleon. Art stolen during the war and then purchased illegally. Hidden vaults of paintings. One of her father’s types might fight over things like that, but when they failed to acquire the newest symbol, they pursued another.
“Something that you can’t buy because the other owned it.”
The others weren’t following her idea.
“Not something like a house. Houses are a dime a dozen if you’re rich, but we think whoever is behind this was in some sort of illegal conspiracy, correct?”
“It seems likely.”
“Where?” Severine suddenly demanded. “They used the Spirit Society to pass messages and the like, but surely they weren’t committing crimes through notes alone?”
Mr. Brand’s brows lifted. “You mean like a speakeasy?”
“Something that you can’t just steal away. Something that you can’t buy yourself. What if, at least part of it, is a membership roster? Evidence of criminal activity that can’t just be sloughed off.”
“You know,” Mr. Brand said, “I read about a person who was making gin. They knew they were being watched, but they couldn’t just move the business. It was too much to hide. In trying to do so, they were uncovered.”
“A property,” Severine suggested quickly. “Something that you can’t walk away with. Something that would be on record, so you could claim it.”
“A deed of ownership,” Mr. Brand nodded. “If they were making something or using a location for transporting or filtering smuggled goods, it might be nigh impossible for the others to switch locations.”
“And,” Severine said, “if I or the somewhat repentant Mrs. Grantley had the deed of ownership, they might lose everything.”
“They might,” Mr. Brand finished, “even be arrested, depending on the activity.”
“If whoever behind this is rich like Mr. DuNoir,” Lisette said. “For all we know, Landon Gentry’s thug employer realized that there’s a stash of something valuable in the home where only weak women live, like with Mrs. Grantley.”
Before they could discuss the possibilities further, Mr. Thorne and Mr. Oliver returned. They brought with them pale and frantic expressions.
“What happened?” Severine demanded.
>
“We got a letter from Madame Cocotte.”
“You didn’t speak with her?”
Mr. Thorne shook his head. “It was a name, an address, and a picture of my sister just outside of that address. If the date on the back of the photograph is to be believed, it was taken after we thought she died.”
Severine gasped and then Mr. Brand said, “That’s awfully interesting timing.”
Mr. Thorne looked at Mr. Oliver and they both nodded.
“Is the address far away?”
Mr. Thorne nodded, his gaze avoiding hers.
“You have to go,” she told him without rancor. “Jane is why you’re here. She might need you.”
Mr. Oliver cleared his throat and he met their gazes. “It’s probably a trap. They want us out of the way.”
Severine thought the same, but she wouldn’t pile onto their problems with her own. Their sister and wife deserved their help more than Severine and her friends.
“If they want you out of the way,” Mr. Brand said, “we have to expect that they’re trying to weaken us.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Severine said. “Jane Oliver is their priority and she might be alive. We can’t…I won’t ask them to sacrifice that for us.”
“I can’t not go,” Osiris Oliver said simply. “I can’t take that chance.”
“I agree with Severine,” Lisette said. “You must go.”
Mr. Brand said nothing, but his gaze was focused hard on the table, and then he said, “Severine is right. The living, or potentially living, come before the dead.”
“You all are living,” Grayson Thorne snapped. “You are living, and we do care about our promise.”
“Then you stay,” Mr. Brand suggested. “Have Oliver go after his wife, and you stay. We’ll make them think you’re gone, and we’ll arm you to the teeth and keep you out of sight.”
“They’ll try for the dogs,” Mr. Oliver said suddenly. “They have no idea what things Grayson and I have acquired in our time looking for Jane. We have enough to put pause on any attack if they were to attack you directly.”