Prophecy (Residue Series #4) (21 page)

I was the only one not surprised, having been the person who sent them here when they went into hiding.

Ignoring the pleasantries, Ms. Veilleux declared, “You’ve been busy. Two Sevens dead….”

“You heard?” I asked, wondering how, given their distance to town.

“We read,” Ms. Veilleux clarified, with a gleam in her eye.

“Being teachers at Ms. Veilleux’s school,” said Ms. Boudreaux, motioning to herself and Ms. Roquette, “we tend to read every now and again.”

She was being snide, but I was used to it. As a teacher to the younger, newer students, I learned at an early age to avoid her as much as possible. That didn’t seem possible right now, unfortunately.

“I imagine you’ve come to speak with Mrs. LeClaire?” she asked, and for dramatic flair adjusted her pointy black hat and ended up tapping Mrs. DeVille in the forehead. In response, Mrs. DeVille quietly grumbled, “Always…always, you must wear that hat.”

Ms. Boudreaux ignored her.

“You’ve come to see Mrs. LeClaire?” she repeated, undeterred.

“Yes,” I said, glancing in the woman’s direction. She was currently sifting through the jars on one of her shelves.

“Believe she can tell you The Seven’s weaknesses, hmmm?” Ms. Boudreaux asserted.

Ms. Veilleux shot a look full of warning in her direction, as if she had said too much.

“Yes,” I uttered, suspiciously. “How did you know?”

“Oh, hmmm, yes, well…,” she replied, flustered, and settled on a vague answer. “Good guess.”

Jocelyn gave me a curious look, because we both believed Ms. Boudreaux knew more than she was admitting. I figured Maggie and Eran were doing the same.

I didn’t get a chance to press her on it, because Mrs. LeClaire had ended her search and was now approaching us. She paused, drew in a slow, deep breath and circled us, and I got the feeling we were being inspected.

“The Relicuum?” she murmured. And a few seconds passed before adding, “Yes, yes…Isadora was correct. They have found the one.” She hummed quietly to herself, finishing her rotation and coming to a stop in front of Jocelyn. “You fear the future. You fear what you believe will come to pass. You fear you cannot exist beyond it. That is your weakness, child. It burdens you, weighs on you. It degrades you. It is the source of what holds you back. But there is strength in you, even if it has been
wasted
.” She nearly spat out this last word in disgust and my instinct to protect Jocelyn ignited. Sensing this, Mrs. LeClaire turned on me. “Stop! This is her fight. She alone must learn to apply her power against the forces that corrupt.” Returning to Jocelyn, her voice softened, and that was the lone reason I allowed her to continue. “Love, Relicuum, love….”

“I love Jameson,” she declared, and my chest swelled.

Mrs. LeClaire appeared not to be impressed. Turning from Jocelyn, she replied indifferently, “And that is what will save you.”

Jocelyn appeared to be thrown by this vague reference to our love being the resolution she’d been seeking, but in typical Jocelyn fashion, she moved on to the more practical reasons for our visit. “Can you tell us how to defeat The Sevens?”

I waited for an “or not” to be added, and given her tone I thought it might. But she stopped herself and that was perceptive of her. I remembered Mrs. LeClaire not appreciating poor behavior, and wondered at one point when my mother brought me here what had happened to Mr. LeClaire.

She didn’t get her answer, in words anyways. Mrs. LeClaire collected the bowls, herbs, and bones she had been searching for earlier and gestured for us to move back.

Carefully, she lined the bowls up, all seven of them, in a single row, and then poured a mixture of herbs from several bags tucked underneath her armpit. Stowing the herbs on a shelf, she then took the bones and aligned them, each one positioned in front of a bowl, so that there was a bone pointing at each bowl.

We watched then as she began to shake, lifting each leg so that her knees came up to her chest. When she began to walk around the bowls this way, I peeked at Jocelyn, who was enthralled, and Maggie and Eran, who seemed inquisitive. Those sentiments only grew more intense when Mrs. LeClaire started to chant:

Papa Legba ouvre baye pou mwen, Ago eh!
Papa Legba Ouvre baye pou mwen,
Ouvre baye pou mwen, Papa
Pou mwen passe, Le’m tounnen map remesi Lwa yo!

She repeated these phrases three times, continuing her bizarre dance until the last word. Her body froze and she threw her hands out at the bowls as if she was tossing energy from her fingers. An unseen force caused the bones to slide wildly, scraping along the wooden floor and landing in front of their respective bowl Some were slammed hard enough that the bowls now sat askew from one another.

Mrs. LeClaire remained stationary, bent at the waist with her hands projected at the bowls for several seconds. Then she picked up the hem of her dress and shuffled forward for inspection. She murmured something to herself, apparently satisfied with the results, and stepped away as the rest of us leaned in and took her place.

The herbs had disappeared and each bowl now contained something different: a pool of water, shrapnel, shards of glass, a burnt surface, a splinter of bone, a small piece of ice, and then nothing at all.

“The last one,” Maggie remarked. “It’s empty.”

“Nothing is ever empty,” Mrs. LeClaire corrected in her strangely vague way. She leaned back and clasped her hands in front of her, conveying that we would need to decipher what her ceremony had told us on our own.

I stooped down for a closer look, the Vire pants still drenched from the rain stiffening my movement. I figure that’s what led me to understand the bowl of water.

“I get it. There are seven bowls, each one representing a specific Seven’s vulnerability. This is Flavian,” I noted, pointing to the bowl containing the puddle.

“Ahh,” Jocelyn murmured. “He was affected by water.”

“Then this must be Sisera,” Maggie added, gesturing to the shrapnel. “Because he was killed by my blade.”

“Right,” I agreed and appraised the remaining bowls. “So the others are susceptible to glass, fire, blunt force, cold, and….” I got stuck at the last one.

“I think we’ll need to figure that one out as we go along,” Eran suggested.

I acknowledged him with a nod.

“How do we know which bowl represents which Seven?” Maggie asked with a shrug. “Anyone have any ideas?” She tilted her head to the women at the table. “Any at all?” she pressed, insinuating that a little help would be appreciated.

When they dropped their eyes to the table, it was clear they wouldn’t be helping us, either.

“Okay then…,” she muttered.

A few seconds of silence passed and someone shifted, prompting the rest of us to stand. Jocelyn drew in a deep breath, weighted with nervous tension, and thanked Mrs. LeClaire. I took her hand and channeled the feeling of peace to her until she looked at me and smiled.

As an unspoken acknowledgement that our visit was ending, Maggie, Eran, Jocelyn, and I said goodbye to the women and headed for the door, but Jocelyn slowed as a question drifted through her mind. Listening to it was an invasion of privacy on my part, but an unintentional one.

The truth was, I knew it was coming. It was the reason she had come with me in the first place, and it hadn’t been fulfilled yet. So when she turned back to the women, I tried to stop her. “Jocelyn, you don’t want to ask that question.”

“Yes, I do,” she replied, her focus pinned on Mrs. LeClaire. And before I could warn her again, she addressed the priestess. “You discovered Jameson’s weakness when he was younger. Is that accurate?”

Mrs. LeClaire assessed Jocelyn before responding, probably determining how Jocelyn would handle her answer. I took advantage of that pause.

“She doesn’t need to know, Mrs. LeClaire.”

Turning suddenly to face me, Jocelyn gawked at me, clearly appalled. Undeterred she repeated, “Is that correct, Mrs. LeClaire?”

“It is,” she replied quietly, and I felt myself grimace.

Damn it
, was now the only thought making its way through my mind.

Jocelyn relaxed, thinking she had won this argument, without any notion that no one would come out a winner.

“Mrs. LeClaire, will you tell me what Jameson’s weakness is?”

The woman hesitated, continuing her assessment.

Urging her for an answer, Jocelyn explained, “If I know what it is, I can help him avoid it.”

“That would be a challenge.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “
You
are his weakness.”

13
REBELLION

“
S
O OUR LOVE WILL SAVE ME
but hurt you?”

This notion had been festering in her since we left the bayou, forced down Felix’s strange kidney and porcupine pie, and waited for the rest of the house to fall asleep so I could sneak into her room. She hadn’t engaged with anyone since Mrs. LeClaire led her to believe it, not a single glance in anyone’s direction and not a word at dinner. And this was exactly why I didn’t want her to know.

“Don’t take it seriously,” I replied, coming into her room. Although, I knew that she would.

“You’re obviously not, or you wouldn’t be here with me.” She sighed in the darkness.

Proving her point, I moved toward her voice. “Where are you?”

She ignored my question in favor of the far more pressing topic, making me want to kiss her just to shut her up. “How many people need to tell you that I’m a danger to you before you’ll believe it?”

“Jocelyn, I know you better than anyone. The only danger you put me in is when you put yourself in jeopardy, because I have to risk my life to save yours.”

She sighed again, a sound that was seductive even if it wasn’t meant to be. “This isn’t a game, Jameson. You take everything so lightly.”

“And you,” I said, finding her and pulling her to me, “are taking this far too seriously.” I slipped my arms around her waist and held her against me. When I spoke again it was quieter, more sincere. “All right, I did believe it once. When I was younger, and had never met you. If I had any idea who you were, other than a Weatherford, I would have stayed clear of you.” Hearing this statement leave my lips caused me to stop and assess the accuracy behind it. When I continued, my head shook with my confession. “No, no, that’s actually not true.”

She sighed in frustration.

“The truth is,” I said, with a shrug, “that by the time I found out that you were the Relicuum, it was too late. I’d already fallen in love with you, Jocelyn. There was no turning back after that, or in this case, there was no turning away. There was nothing anyone could do, not you, not your family, not mine, and definitely not me. You are my weakness, because I
can’t
say goodbye. And I’m willing to accept that if it means being with you for only a few more days, a few more hours, a few more minutes. Whether the prophecy is correct or not doesn’t matter to me. What does is making the most of the time we have on this earth. I’m going to take it, regardless of the risks that might come attached with it.”

With my eyes adjusted to the dark now, I saw her frown.

“You look…torn….”

“I am,” she admitted. “Part of me wants to kiss you, part of me wants to push you away. You are impossible to argue with, do you know that?”

“Yes, I’ve been told,” I said, unsuccessfully trying to hold back a grin. “And Jocelyn?”

“Hmm?”

“You should choose the kiss.”

The hint of a smile lifted her cheeks and I tightened my hold around her waist.

She leaned in and before either one of us remembered Charlotte’s curse, our lips touched.

Jocelyn let out a moan, making me think it was in passion. Not until she swayed to the side in an effort to put space between us did I understand. I held her up, steadying her, and drew in the pain to relieve her of it.

“Stop,” she whispered. “Jameson, stop.”

I shook my head, because that was all I could manage, and continued to draw the hurt from her. Then she withdrew from me and moved away, in an attempt to save me.

We healed, slowly, both of us panting and with our hands on our knees, propping us up. Only when we looked up to check on each other did I know the effects of the curse were dissipating.

I reached out and took her arm, straightening her to a full standing position. “Are you all right?”

“I’m going to be…when Charlotte recants this curse,” she muttered, somewhat joking. She glanced at the bed, and in the moonlight I saw the craving on her face. “Think you can hold me tonight?”

I was surprised she even asked. “Yes,” I said and watched her considering what to do next.

“Jocelyn,” I said, although it came out a question.

Her head spun back to me. “Hmm?”

“Are you…Have you…been with anyone before?”

Her face went still before she answered. “Never.”