A Twisted Ladder (32 page)

Sam said, “You’re in love with him. It’s OK to say it.”

“No I—I can’t be in . . . We’ve taken a step back, just as things were starting to get serious. But I think it’s over.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re in love with him.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Aren’t you?”

The tears came again. Madeleine shook her head, not sure if the gesture was meant to answer Sam’s question, or to deny her own idiotic blubbering.

Sam held her arm in place, rubbing Madeleine’s shoulders. “Tell me again what happened.”

Madeleine took a shaky breath. “We just had a disagreement over a misunderstanding, and his sense of trust was—”

Sam thumped her shoulder. “Yeah, you said all that the first time. Now tell me what really happened.”

Madeleine looked at her friend. Sam’s eyes were glassy as her own, and Madeleine felt touched by her empathy, and so she took a deep breath and told her the deeper truth about what happened. She kept her voice in a low whisper, perpetuating the somber air of the library with her hushed tone. Such a stern partition of space. What Marc must have meant as an illusion of space, Madeleine thought, even as she was telling Sam about what happened with Zenon at the flower shop. She even told her of the incident before that, where she’d felt the same sense of invasion at the gala.

Sam listened carefully. “Tell me again how you stopped it in the flower shop.”

Madeleine shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Didn’t feel like some heroic breakthrough or anything. It was subtle. I quit fighting inside.”

She recalled her rage and then the sudden absence of emotion. “And it’s like I projected myself into the wind, just a last ditch effort to escape, and I thought of him and me in there as though we were mice in a laboratory. I just observed.”

“And then you were all right?”

Madeleine nodded. “Suddenly I was me again, only I’d changed who I was. Or became more of who I’m supposed to be. As if by letting go of control I somehow gained something.”

“You should practice that.”

“Practice what?”

“What you just described. Because what if it happens again?”

Madeleine thought about this. “That’s what bothers me. I’ve been avoiding Zenon, but you’re right. It could happen again. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him toy around with me.”

She looked at Sam. “I tried to explain it to Ethan, but I must have sounded ridiculous. I don’t think he knows what to make of it.
I
wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t been there.”

“Did Zenon acknowledge the . . . the what did you call it, implanted suggestion?”

“When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘evolving.’ ”

Sam’s expression took on a new depth of gravity. “My God.”

They were silent for a moment, then Sam said, “Your grandmother’s pigeon game.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you say that Zenon and Chloe have some sort of weird connection?”

“Yeah, he said something about having done some work for her. And she keeps trying to fix me up with him.” Madeleine suppressed a shudder.

“You said you’d felt the same sensation when you were around Chloe before.”

Madeleine nodded. “She has a trick of getting her way. In retrospect, it felt similar, though not as strong with her. It happened on that first meeting, when she wanted me to report on what I learned about Marc’s suicide.”

“And it worked.”

“Not really. It seemed artificial, even then. I haven’t told her about this.” She reached into the box from the Houma house and pulled out Marc’s cell phone, navigating to the picture of Marc with Emily Hammond.

Sam looked at it. “Marc had a girlfriend?”

“It would appear that way. Chloe had actually told me as much at the gala and I didn’t believe her. But now that I found this, my gut tells me to keep quiet about it. If she knew I found something I’m sure she’d try to use the trick.”

Sam was frowning. “But
why?
Is she just that nosy?”

“I have no idea,” Madeleine said, rubbing her eyes.

“Well, if Chloe knows the suggestion trick, maybe Zenon learned it from her.”

Madeleine thought it over, but it seemed doubtful. “Maybe. I guess. But what’s it got to do with pigeons?”

“If you wanted to learn how to control someone’s mind, wouldn’t it be easier to start with a simpler mind?”

Madeleine gazed at Sam, thoughtful; troubled. “Like the mind of a pigeon?”

MADELEINE SWITCHED OFF THE
radio. It couldn’t possibly compete with the turmoil inside her head. She and Sam pulled up in front of her house, standing elbow-to-elbow among the other mansions, all with scrolling wrought iron and wood trim piping, all glowing violet in the sleepy Gulf sunset. Madeleine thought about what Ethan had said about wanting to find someone with whom he might share a future, have kids. She looked at her house and wondered if she could truly indulge in it that way. Let it be a home. Fill it with her heart.

Esplanade was bustling with the usual French Quarter activity: tourists, buskers, hustlers, locals. Madeleine pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the door. She heard her father’s voice. He sounded angry.

Sam pulled her door handle, and Madeleine grabbed her wrist. “Hang on. It’s Daddy.”

He stood two doors down, shouting and pointing. Sam and Madeleine watched and listened. Sam’s brow creased in a frown.

Madeleine groped for her cell phone inside her bag. “He’s in a rant.”

“What should we do?”

But before Madeleine could answer, Daddy focused his shouts on a passerby, a teenager wearing a dark blue backpack. Daddy lunged at him.

“Jesus!” Sam gasped.

Books and papers tumbled to the sidewalk.

“Stay in the truck! And call Vinny!” Madeleine threw open the door and ran for her father. Daddy had grabbed the teenager by both arms and was shaking him, eyes wild. The kid thrashed with his fists balled.

“Daddy! Let go!”

At the sound of his daughter’s voice, Daddy released the boy and spun around. The teen turned and gaped at Daddy and Madeleine. His cheeks were flushed and his eyebrows had come together in an angry V. Other passersby had stopped to watch from a safe distance.

“It’s all right,” Madeleine said to the boy as she stepped toward her father, hands open and voice more calm than she felt. “My father’s sick. We’ve called the police. You should go home.”

The kid glanced at the onlookers and then pointed his finger directly in Daddy’s face. “Hey, fuck you, old man.”

Daddy’s eyes were wide, his jaw tense. Mercifully, he ignored the teen and stared at his daughter. The boy stooped to gather his books and papers.

“Daddy, it’s me. Come on, let’s go on inside.”

He took a step toward her and then stopped, pointing toward the house. “There’s poison in the very walls. River devils nesting there.”

“All right—”

But then he shouted, so loud that she took an involuntary step backward. “It’s a vehicle of death!”

She shouldn’t have shrank back like that. Just as bad as aggressing toward him. Madeleine tried to remain calm and steady, but she was too familiar with the violence in her father’s eyes.

“I hear you, Daddy. Let’s just walk a little.”

“The air in that house is poisoned!”

The teenager had stuffed his things back into his backpack. He leaned his face directly in front of Daddy’s. “Asshole! You’re fucking crazy!”

He spat. Daddy darted forward with his lips pulled back to reveal his teeth. The boy jumped back.

Madeleine put her hand to her father’s arm. “Forget it. Come on Dad—”

But he jerked away from her as though he’d been stung by a wasp. “Get away from me! What are you? You brought them here!”

Madeleine kept her voice soothing. “I want them out, too. It’s me, Madeleine.”

“You ain’t no little girl. I know who you are. You brought them here.”

Daddy’s fist whipped out and punched her in the cheek. The boy turned and ran.

Madeleine staggered to her left, struggling to catch her balance. A second blow. The sky funneled away and concrete skinned her palms. She pushed against it, trying to use that plane of sidewalk to get her bearings. She felt as though she were on her back with the pavement looming over her like the lid of a coffin. Crushing her knees. But that couldn’t be right. She must have been face-down, lying prone. . . .

Is he going to kill me?

The seams between each concrete square opened to sprouts of black thorns that spiraled upward in lazy, trembling spurts of growth.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you!”

A kick to her middle. The muscle beneath her rib cage responded with a single spasm followed by paralysis. Her mouth opened. Her lungs did not fill.

He wouldn’t. He won’t. He’ll stop himself before it’s too late
.

“I know what you are!”

Hands at her throat. Her lungs couldn’t fill. Above, sweeps of lavender clouds disappeared to bramble. It stretched up and folded over her, hid her inside its tunnels. Laughter in there. A child’s giggles.

Severin?

The little girl was right. The bramble was safe. Predator and prey on equal footing. Madeleine let herself seep into the black hollows. A cocoon of silence and darkness.

HAHNVILLE, 1916

O
N A COOL FALL
morning, Jacob and Rémi set out to catch an alligator. Time had passed at Terrefleurs with the usual fluctuation in seasons: hot and less hot, with the occasional surprise of actual cold. Chloe’s waist had returned to its narrow form, and she’d been walking the plantation in the company of infant twin boys. Rémi had noticed the shock on Jacob’s face when he’d realized the black twins had blue eyes. Still, Jacob had said nothing.

Now, as the first glow of sunrise was breaking over rows of sugarcane, Rémi dressed and then greeted Jacob, leading him to the chicken coop. Ulysses could appear at any moment, and this knowledge caused anxiety for Rémi. Though Chloe seemed to have done her best to free him of the demon, Ulysses had been showing his face with increased frequency. Other than Chloe, Rémi had told no one about him.

Jacob seemed far too energetic. Rémi thought it odd that Jacob had never seen an alligator in the wild. After all, he had lived in Louisiana for years now. A milksop who had not properly adjusted to plantation life, as yet regarding it with an adventurous and romantic eye, Jacob still could not seem to foster an interest in the actual
work
.

“I’m gonna have to get at least three alligators,” Jacob prattled as Rémi selected an aging cock. “If we get a real big one I’m gonna have it stuffed and put in the huntin lodge. The other one I’ll get made into boots, and the last one y’all can cook. I know you Creoles like to eat’m. I never tried it but then again you don’t see many alligators in the Kentucky mountains. I don’t really want to cook it for myself but y’all can cook it up and maybe I’ll try some.”

Rémi severed the cock’s head. Blood snaked across Jacob’s shirt and shocked him into silence. This gave Rémi some satisfaction. He cleaved the fowl into smaller pieces and then stuffed them into a rice sack. Packed with the carcass and a modest amount of provisions for a day on the river, they loaded the rowboat and launched it into the bayou behind Terrefleurs.