A Circle of Ashes (3 page)

“Ooh,” said Axelle, finishing her orange juice and vodka. “Such wisdom from one so
young
. But Thais, tell me you aren’t happy to know you have a family, a background, a history. You know who you are and where you’re from. Isn’t that better than being a little boat adrift at sea?”

I didn’t answer as I ate my toast. She had me. My whole life, it had been just me and my dad. When he’d died, I’d had no one—just a family friend, a neighbor who cared about me. But no family. It was true—I’d felt lost. Then Axelle had brought me to New Orleans, and Clio and I had found each other. Discovering that I had a sister and a grandmother was like winning the lottery. I belonged to someone. I wasn’t alone.

Then I’d found out they were witches. I’d never taken witchcraft or Wicca or any of that stuff seriously—I’d thought it was all a joke. The disappointment that they were involved in it had been sharp and immediate. Now… I was more used to the idea. I accepted that it ran in
my
blood too. But it hadn’t been what I wanted. And after last night’s explosive spell, my doubts seemed justified.

I’d found my family, and they were witches.

I’d found my soul mate, my true love, and he had betrayed me.

And all of this was woven into the unbelievable, movie-plot background that Petra, Axelle, Luc, and a bunch of other people were in
fact still experiencing a spell that had been set into motion in 1763, more than 240 years ago. They were immortal.

Now they wanted to make me and Clio immortal too. And we had to decide.

I felt Axelle’s eyes on me and hoped my feelings weren’t transparent. Immortality. Luc was immortal—he would never age. If we had stayed together, I would get old and die someday, and he wouldn’t, ever. But if I were immortal…

It wouldn’t even matter, because we wouldn’t be together, because he was a lying, cheating bastard.

I heard footsteps on the wooden stairs that led to Axelle’s attic workroom. Great. Now I had to deal with Daedalus or Jules, who practically lived here.

“Is she back yet?”

The voice came to me in the kitchen and sent chills down my spine.

“Can’t you call Petra?” Luc went on, crossing the dimly lit room.

Axelle waited till he was in sight, then wordlessly pointed to me, a small cat’s smile on her face.

Luc stopped short when he saw me.

I glanced at him for a second, just long enough to stop my heart and sear his image into my brain. Luc. Unlike Axelle, he did look like he’d been up all night. He was in the same clothes as yesterday. His face was darkened by a day’s worth of beard. His eyes, the color of the sky at twilight, were upset, shadowed.

Good.

“Thais.” He took a step closer and I saw him run a hand through his disheveled, too-long dark hair. I turned and put my plate in the sink, unable to swallow.

“I was worried,” he said, and it sounded like getting those words out cost him. I was all too aware of Axelle’s black, interested eyes following this exchange like a tennis match.

I tried to wipe any expression from my face and turned back to him.

“And this matters because… ?” I said coolly.

He frowned. “Are you okay, then?”

“I’m fine. I mean, my heart hasn’t been ripped out and stomped on
today
.” I was surprising myself—it was like I could channel my inner bitch all of a sudden. I’d never spoken so coldly to anyone in my life.

Luc flushed, which of course increased his gorgeousness level to about a forty-seven on a scale from one to ten. “That isn’t fair,” he said in a low voice, and I saw his hands clench at his sides.

“Unfair?
You’re
talking to
me
about unfair?” I felt my cheeks heat with anger. “Are you
nuts
? Who the hell do you think you are?”

Suddenly I felt like I was going to lose it in a huge, humiliating way. I spun and stalked to my room, which was a little addition past the kitchen. I slammed the door behind me, but it hit Luc’s shoulder with a thud and he shoved it open so hard it crashed against the wall, rattling the pictures.

I’d never seen him look so angry, not even on that horrible night when Clio and I had found out he’d been two-timing us—with each other. I still felt sick when I thought of it.

“I think I’m
yours
,” he said furiously. I backed away from him until I reached my bed, but I wasn’t scared. I was furious too, my anger and pain rising in me like a tidal wave.

“I think I was made for you and you for me,” he went on, his jaw clenched and his body rigid with tension. “I think I found you just when I wanted to die. I think I found someone to live for. At last.”

I was in hell. This was what hell was.

“But I screwed up,” he said. “I made a huge mistake because I was stupid and scared—” He stopped suddenly, as if startled that word had left his lips. “I screwed up,” he said more calmly. “I’m sorrier than I can say. I regret it more than anything.” He looked into my eyes, and he was so familiar to me, so much who I loved, that I wanted to scream. “Out of 260 years’ worth of regrets, this is the biggest one.”

I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding so hard it was a physical pain in my chest. Here’s the really humiliating part:
I wanted to buy it
, to say, I forgive you. I wanted to reach out and grab him and hold his head in my hands so I could kiss him hard,
hard
. I wanted to pull him down onto my bed with me and feel him pressed all against me, like I had before, on the levee by the river. I wanted it so much I could taste it, feel it.

“Thais,” he said, moving closer, his voice much softer. “Hit me if you want. Throw things at me. Yell and scream and curse my name until your voice is gone. But come back to me. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you.” He paused. “Which is saying something.” The rest of his life would be quite a long time. Unless he used the Treize’s spell to die.

Still I couldn’t speak. My eyes felt wide and huge, staring at him with a longing so deep it felt like thirst.

He reached out one hand and slowly, slowly stroked one finger up my bare arm. His hands, his knowing hands, had been all over my body, and the memory of it choked me.

My brain was shorting out. My world was telescoping inward till it contained only me and Luc. I swallowed hard.

“No,” I said, in a barely audible whisper. I pulled my arm away from his touch and drew in a shuddering breath. “No.”

He took a step back, searching my face. I saw new pain in his eyes, as if I could see hope actually dying, and I looked away.

“I could make you love me,” he said, his voice low and tense again.

Cold reason dumped into my brain. I met his eyes again.

“You think? Like with a
spell
?”

His jaw tightened. Then he looked down, and I saw both shame and despair on his face. “Thais, I—” He started to raise a hand, then dropped it. He looked at me for a long time, then finally turned and left my room. As soon as he was through the door, I shut it behind him and locked it.

Then I sat on my bed, shaking, and waited for the tears to come.

T
he tombstones were speckled with lichen and moss, the result of hundreds of years of heat and humidity. Ouida thought they looked beautiful, and she focused her camera at a barely readable inscription. With the grainy black-and-white film she was using, this image would be striking, melancholy, like the cemetery itself. She checked the light meter and decided to underexpose the film so that the inscription would show up darker. Angling her camera on its tripod, she carefully clicked the shutter, then stood back, pleased. That would come out well.

Cemeteries fascinated her. Maybe it was like looking through the window of an exclusive club to which she’d never belong. A quiet laugh escaped her, and she covered her mouth, not wanting to be overheard.

Once her tripod was stowed, Ouida looked around, feeling a light gray sense of—not dread, it wasn’t that bad; maybe just sadness?—descend on her. There was another reason she was in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 besides just a photo op.

Head down, she started walking to the far southeast corner, one of the first areas to have been filled in, back in the 1790s. God, that had been a long time ago. Yet the memories of it were still sharply engraved in her mind, not softened or weathered by time.

A few minutes’ walking brought her to a place she visited every time she was in New Orleans. There was a small bench opposite the family crypt, and she sat on it, putting down her camera equipment bag. The sun was hot, reflecting off the white marble everywhere, the cement-sealed tombs. People had learned long ago to clear a graveyard of trees unless they wanted thick roots to start popping coffins out of the ground ten years down the road.

Ouida thought of all the winters she’d spent freezing up in Massachusetts. She was a southerner, all right. The cold had gone right through her bones to her marrow. Here the heat seemed to melt through her skin, softening her inside, relaxing layers of tension. She was more at home here, more herself. But the burden of memories was so much easier to bear in Massachusetts. She knew she’d return.

After several minutes, Ouida frowned. Someone was coming. Someone she knew. She let her mind expand into the space around her, let slim tendrils of awareness pick up information in a growing circle.

Daedalus.

A minute later he appeared, looking incongruous in a black polo shirt and tan linen pants.

“Ouida,” he said. “I thought I felt you over here.” He regarded her, then looked around. Seeing the name on the tomb opposite her, he smiled thinly. “‘La Famille Martin,”’ he read. “‘Armand. Gregoire. Antonine.’ Still rehashing the past, eh, Ouida?”

It was not something she was going to discuss with him. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged and, uninvited, sat next to her on the bench. “Collecting useful things.” He gestured to the canvas shopping bag he held. “There are always broken graves in a cemetery this old. Sometimes one can find the occasional bone for one’s supply cabinet. Also, Spanish moss, other mosses, any number of useful things.”

Ouida looked at him with distaste, and he laughed. “What, you get your bones from a mailorder catalog? Please.”

“I don’t seem to do many spells that call for human bones, Daedalus.”

“Don’t give me that superior attitude, Ouida,” he said, not angrily. “We’ve always known that our interests are different.” He waved a hand around the cemetery. “Plus, you know, I always check for Melita.”

Ouida was truly surprised. “Check for her? As if she might be buried somewhere? You’re kidding. How could she possibly be dead?”

Daedalus shrugged. “Most likely she isn’t. But I’ve come to believe there’s a slim chance the rite may have affected her differently somehow—maybe because of all the magick she’d done before or for some other reason. After all, it killed Cerise. So maybe it did something different to Melita. There’s always hope, however far-fetched. The important thing would be to find her, dead or alive, before she found any of us.”

Ouida scoffed. “She’s had two hundred years to find us if she wanted. None of us has been in hiding.”

“Yes, but now we’re trying to do the rite,” Daedalus reminded her.

“Or at least you are,” Ouida returned.

Daedalus frowned. “We all are. Everyone is.”

Ouida didn’t say anything. Gathering bones? Looking for Melita? What was Daedalus actually doing here? Did he know something about
Melita that he hadn’t told anyone? Had he found her? Could he even be in league with her or somehow have usurped her power?

Ouida shook her head, aware that Daedalus was watching her. She’d blocked her thoughts and knew he couldn’t be eavesdropping. She had her secrets, just as Daedalus did. She sighed. The Treize was about as safe and trustworthy as an adder’s nest.

R
ocks. If there was one thing Louisiana had over Ireland, it was that there were no cursed rocks in the ground. Plowing was easy there. The dirt was rich and black, bursting with life and nourished by the Delta basin.

Here the soil was thin and pale gray, and you couldn’t spit without hitting rock after rock after rock. Marcel had been working this same plot of ground for, what, seven years now? Yet each spring and each autumn, he managed to plow up yet another ton of rocks, as if the earth herself were slowly pushing them to the surface all throughout the year.

And maybe she was.

Marcel paused and wiped his wet brow with the coarse brown wool of his monk’s robe, then bent his back over the hand-powered plow again. Earth. Giver of life. Mindlessly he watched as the thick steel blade cut through the thin turf and peeled it up in two curling layers. He heard the chink of the blade hitting a rock, of course, because he’d gone about four inches, and he knelt to wrest it up and add it to the growing pile by the side of the field. It would become part of a wall, like the rest.

The ground was cold as his fingers scrabbled around the large stone. It was September; soon it would be winter here and bitter, with icy winds borne off the western sea. Marcel’s fingers grabbed the rock, and suddenly he felt something slice his finger.

Wincing, he pulled up his hand and found an ancient shard of glass embedded in his skin. Good job. Carefully he pulled the shard out and was surprised by the sudden rush of blood from the relatively small cut. In seconds the blood had run across his hand and begun dripping onto the ground. He’d better get to the infirmary, have Brother Niall do something.

He glanced down, and with no warning, Marcel was hurled back through time, to another place, another life.

It had been dark, pouring rain, but with every flash of lightning Marcel had seen how the wet ground beneath Cerise was red with her blood. He closed his eyes, blinking hard, not wanting to remember.

He’d fallen in love with her. He’d been seventeen. She’d been fourteen but already a woman, doing a woman’s work. She’d laughed and
spurned him, saying that she was too young to settle down, that she was content to stay at home with her mother and sister.