Sweet Unrest (14 page)

Twenty

Everywhere I look, I see blood. It’s splattered across the tall grass like some demented Jackson Pollock. It runs into the dark earth like a tiny macabre river. And the smell. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the smell of it, like rust and death. A putrid stench mixed with something sickeningly sweet coats my tongue, makes me gag. It’s the sweetness that seems the more obscene.

The girl’s body is arranged at an unnatural angle. Arranged is the only word for it, because no one could possibly fall that way. Her neck is twisted to the side, as though she’s trying to look over her shoulder. As though she was trying to escape from death itself and made the mistake of looking back. Across the delicate line of her throat is a deep gash. Across her chest, angular symbols are the only thing keeping her from looking bare. She’s been gone for hours now and the blood has stopped welling, has turned thick and sticky. I think I’m going to be sick when I realize the flies have already found her.

Someone’s screaming. A high, plaintive, wailing sound. Then I realize it’s me. My throat is sore from it, but I can’t stop.

Strong arms band around me as I scream and a soft voice whispers into my hair. “Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay.”

I know that voice, but he was holding the knife. He was standing over Lila’s poor broken body, holding the knife that killed her. The image is burned into my mind. I’ll never be free of it.

“Shhh. Shhh. You have to stop screaming.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop screaming. But I do. And then I’m only numb. I can’t feel anything. I may never feel anything again.

Twenty
-
One

It was still dark when I woke with the smell of death in my nose. It hung in the air of my bedroom, thick and almost sweet with the scent of rot. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t breathe. I needed air so desperately that I didn’t think about the danger, just pulled on some rumpled shorts and went outside.

The night was still warm, and gray clouds hung heavy on the horizon. Heat lightning flickered across the sky, lighting up the tops of the trees and throwing them into sharp relief, like claws reaching up into the momentarily bright sky. The stars were hidden behind the heavy clouds, and the only light came from the porch behind me.

I took deep breaths, trying to steady myself. I needed to relax. I needed to move. I needed to walk, but I didn’t want to go anywhere near the woods or the pond, so I headed instead toward some of the manicured gardens that wrapped around the big house.

When I entered the first garden, I realized I wasn’t alone. There, in the shadows, someone sat, hunched against the night. It took me a second to calm down enough to realize it was only Piers. He was sitting on one of the benches that ringed the main fountain. Maybe I should’ve been completely freaked out to run across this huge guy with his dangerous-looking tattoos, but he had his smoothly shaved head in his hands, and he looked about as pitiful as I felt.

I shuffled my feet in the gravel to let him know I was approaching, and he raised his head and smiled when he realized who it was. “Couldn’t sleep either?” I asked as I plopped down next to him.

He shook his head. “I’m still not used to sharing a room with four other guys,” he told me. “I thought moving out here would help, so I could be closer to Chloe, but it’s killing me.”

“I’m sure she appreciates it.”

“I’m not,” he said, letting out a tired-sounding sigh. “We’re about finished up with Thisbe’s place now, so I might go on back to my place in Nashville. Your dad wants me to take a few of those artifacts we found and get a head start on some research. I’m not doing Chloe any good here, so maybe I can help the team out if I go.”

“I think she has a lot on her mind right now. She’ll be back to her old self soon.” I hoped this was the case, and I could see from the pain in his eyes that he did too.

“I understand all of this is hard on her, but still, I’m getting this feeling there’s something else going on. Whatever it is, she won’t let me help her deal with it.”

“I wouldn’t make any big decisions now,” I told him. “Chloe’ll come around. You’ll see.”

“I hope so.” Piers let out another long breath and stood up. “Well, I’ve gotta try to get some sleep. Your dad’s relentless in the mornings.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was good talking to you, Lucy.” He stretched his muscled arms over his head to work out the kinks. “You take care out here, though. The grounds around the house are safe enough with all the security we have, but it’s not a good idea to go out toward the fields.”

“Why? Afraid a ghost will get me?” I asked without thinking, then went cold the moment the words were out of my mouth. Thankfully, Piers didn’t seem to notice.

“Nah, but I’ve seen enough dark places in this world to stick to the well-lit ones myself.” He nodded toward the dim lamps that ringed the garden.

“Don’t worry. I’m going home in a few minutes. I just needed to get some air.”

He gave me a little salute and took one of the paths that lead back toward the employees’ dorm. I propped my feet up on the bench where he’d been sitting and watched the water dance in the fountain as I wondered about the “dark places” he’d mentioned.

I didn’t hear Alex approaching until his voice broke through my thoughts. “You shouldn’t be here,
ma chère
.”

I about jumped out of my skin at the sound of it. I’d known all along that this moment would come—that I would have to face him again and really confront what he was—but I wasn’t planning for it to happen in the dead of night.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He came closer, and I could see he was worried. It took me a second to realize he was worried about
me
. Somehow that helped.

“The night’s not safe for a woman alone,” he added softly. His held his whole body tense, almost like he was in pain.

“Why? Because I might run into someone like you?” I struggled to keep my voice even, but I could feel panic rising. I thought of Lila, of Emaline. “Some
thing
like you?”

I didn’t know what I expected from him, but it wasn’t the pained smile he gave me. “I couldn’t hurt you, Lucy.”

His words—and the truth of them—hung in the night air between. “No. You couldn’t, could you?” I said slowly.

He shook his head, for once refusing to meet my eyes.

“I had a bad dream. I needed to get some air,” I told him, an offering between us.

“It must have been quite awful to drive you out into the night.” Alex glanced up, tentative. He didn’t come any closer, as though he knew things had shifted between us. As though this moment was some kind of a test.

“It was.”

“But it was only a dream, yes?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “I don’t know,” I said, in a voice so small even I could scarcely hear it. I took a deep breath and looked at him, wondering what I was doing—what I could possibly be thinking—sitting there in the dead of night talking to a ghost. “The dreams I’ve been having … ” But I couldn’t make myself tell him.

“Please,” he urged. “Go on.”

I felt crazy, absolutely insane, and yet something about the moment—the concern on Alex’s face, how easy it felt to be there with him even though I knew now what he was—something made the moment feel right. Like it was always supposed to happen this way.

Finally I gathered up enough courage to speak. “I think they might be more than dreams. I think they might be about the past.”

“The past?”

I swallowed hard and then forced myself to say the words I’d been afraid to say out loud. “About
you
in the past.”

When he didn’t immediately respond—when his face remained that blank mask he reverted to when he wanted to hide his emotions from me—I continued. “I didn’t know what to make of it at first. I’m dreaming about you, but they’re more than dreams. My subconscious keeps putting you with people I shouldn’t know, in situations I shouldn’t know about.” I silently willed him to say something.

“And these dreams—they are so horrible that you find it necessary to escape into the night?” he asked quietly.

“Some,” I told him honestly. “I’ve been having that kind more lately. Not all of them are like that, though.” I could feel my cheeks heat at the thought of the other dreams I’d had about him.

“And the others?”

“I don’t want to talk about them,” I told him.

“Perhaps you should. You could tell me all about your dreams, and then maybe they would leave you be. Like exorcising a ghost.”

“No,” I said quickly. His words hit dangerously close to something I’d started to fear. Part of me wanted to know everything I could, but another part of me worried that once I knew, there wouldn’t be any reason for him to stay. His unfinished business, or whatever was holding him here, would be done and he’d disappear for good. And that part of me wasn’t ready for him to be gone.

“But you said they were about me.” He stepped closer. “I’d very much like to hear about your dreams of me, Lucy.”

“Yes, and that’s exactly
why
I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered. With him so close, it was too easy to remember Armantine’s desire. With the soft heat of the night brushing against my skin, it took everything I had to pull myself back from him. To refuse to let myself fall into her feelings for him.

Because the truth was, even if my dreams were really about the past, I didn’t know him. Or at least, I didn’t know
this
version of him. Not nearly enough to feel anything close to what Armantine had felt.

And yet, he was also the Alex from my dreams. The one who’d looked at Armantine and treated her as an equal when no one else had. The one who’d wrapped her in his arms and calmed her when she discovered the broken body of her friend. No matter how many questions I still had as I stood there in the dark with him, the coldness that had settled in my chest from the dream was easing.

“I dream about you sometimes … and about a girl named Armantine.”

When I said her name, pain flashed across his face before he could turn away. His reaction told me everything I needed to know.

“She’s real, then,” I said. It was no longer a question.

He nodded.

“And you knew her,” I insisted, but he only turned away from me and stared out into the darkness beyond. The unease grew in the hollow pit of my stomach. “She meant something to you.”

At first I thought he wouldn’t talk, but then his voice floated across the thick air of the night, barely a whisper. “She meant everything,” he said softly after I’d been silent for a while.

“What happened to her?”

“She is gone.”

“But you’re not,” I said, stepping closer to him. “You’re here.”

He nodded.

“But why are you still here?”

“I am not sure, but I think the answer is out there,” he said, gesturing toward the darkness beyond us. “In the witch’s house. I think something about that place is keeping me tied to this world, to this place.”

“What do you mean, ‘this place’? Like, the plantation?”

He was looking at me, but I knew he wasn’t really seeing me. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to invent an answer or trying figure it out himself. I saw in him, then, a fragility I hadn’t noticed before, but that had probably always been there, just below the surface.

“Here. On this land.” He gestured around me. “I can only go a short distance away from the witch’s house before something calls me back there. The pond is about the farthest I can go comfortably. Being here, near the house, is … difficult. And going beyond the gate—impossible.”

“And you think something in that cabin is causing it?” I thought for a moment about the Voodoo doll my dad had found, but dismissed it as a possibility. It wasn’t in the house anymore, anyway—they’d secured it at the university right after Mama Legba had talked about burning it. In fact, it was probably one of the things Piers would be taking up to Nashville.

Alex nodded. He looked utterly lost.

“Will you tell me about her—Armantine?”

“Hers is not my story to tell,” he said softly.

Of course it wasn’t. Tired, done with the whole evening, I stood to leave.

“Please,” he said. “Do not be angry. I would tell you if I could.”

“That’s not good enough.” I set my shoulders and took a step toward him. He didn’t retreat. “I want the truth. I
need
the truth.”

“Are you sure,
ma chère
? Now, your world is safe and whole. If I answer your questions, if I give you the truth—whatever that is—who knows how many of your illusions might shatter. Once that happens, you will not be able to put them back together. Once that happens, there is no going back.”

But my illusions were already shattered, my world already tilted wickedly on an unfamiliar axis. I had no delusions it was ever going back. I was ready to go forward. “The truth, Alex.”

“Will you help me, then? I need to free myself from this place. I need to know what is keeping me here.”

I nodded. “But I’m not going out to that cabin tonight. Tomorrow. When it’s light out.”

Alex considered me for a moment, the indecision clear on his face, before nodding tensely as though accepting my terms. Tentatively, he reached out his hand, gesturing for me to take it. “Then find out for yourself,
ma chère
.”

I hesitated for a moment and then took another step forward. And grasped air.

Twenty
-
Two

The moment my hand touched the warm air where his hand should have been, I was tossed back, suddenly, into Armantine’s world. The room I was in had large windows overlooking the river—her studio, I realized when I saw the art supplies and half-finished paintings propped up around the edge of the floor.

It was some time after that day by the pond—I recognized the sketches she’d spread on her worktable as being the same as the ones she’d done that day. She hadn’t started the painting yet, though.

And there, sitting in front of a small, blank canvas without moving, was the girl—Armantine. He knew she could sense him, yet she refused to turn.

“Are you done thinking yet,
mon coeur
?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she told him, turning finally to look at him.

He thought he’d remembered what it felt like to be near her, the way the blood thrummed in his veins and his heart reeled when she was close. But those memories were nothing compared to the reality of being there in her presence. The whole room smelled like her—the soft, floral scent cut through with the faint burn of the turpentine she used to clean her brushes.

I could feel the weariness in his bones, the sheer exhaustion borne by days of worrying about her. She seemed to sense it too.

“You’ve not been sleeping?” she asked, her dark eyes narrowing in concern.

He walked over and traced over the shadows under her eyes. Her skin was so soft, it reminded him of a petal. “I could ask the same of you. Did you think I would be able to go on as though nothing had happened?”

When she began to turn away from him, he took her chin gently in his hand and refused to let her hide. “That
is
what you thought of me, yes?” The understanding was molten lead in his stomach. He searched her face for some clue. “What cause have I given you to doubt me?”

“You’ve done nothing.” But she stepped back just the same.

“Then help me understand.” His voice was soft, an urgent plea. He stepped closer and took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed the underside of her wrist. “Explain it to me, Armantine.”

She pulled away instead. She walked to the window and studied the street below, closing him out. “You talk of love, but your love would ruin me.”

He straightened. “How could making you my wife ruin you?”

“Your wife?” She laughed then. A dry, hollow sound that held no joy. “Haven’t you realized what I
am?”

He had, of course. It simply had not mattered.

“I’m not a Creole,” she confirmed. “I’m not even one of the poor Americans who come trailing into our city like fleas on a dog. I’m a freewoman, true, and my skin may look no different than yours, but my blood binds me nonetheless.” She took a breath. “My mother might have been a freewoman, but her mother was not. Do you not understand? That means something in these parts.”

“It makes not a bit of difference to what is between us.” He stepped closer. “You must know that. You must feel even a little of what I feel?”

She wouldn’t answer him.

“Armantine,” he whispered. He was losing her.

“Please—” she said, but he did not understand what she was asking for.

“I cannot simply forget about you. I cannot let you go.”

“And I will not be kept,” she said softly, defeated. “I know other girls are. I know we could come to some agreement that would assure my future. Then, when you tire of me, I would be assured a settlement. A home, perhaps. Money for any children that might result.”

The mention of children shocked him. “And you think so little of me that you believe I would agree to this? That I would willingly give you up. Give our children up?”

“It is what is
done
. Men do not grow old with their mistresses.
This
is what women in my position are faced with. What
I
am faced with. These
agreements
,” she spat. The anger and frustration she’d felt her entire life bubbled up. “They are the one thing I’ve refused to contemplate for myself. No matter that they’ve been offered. Many times. By men far richer and more important than you. But for you … ” Her voice softened. “For you, I would consider it. Don’t ask it of me. Please, I beg you.”

He stared at her, shocked, and then, unable to hold back any longer, he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her close, pressing his lips into the softness of her hair. She struggled against him, but only for a moment before collapsing into his arms.

“This is not at all as I planned for today to go, my love,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, in a voice so small, so broken, that he had a sudden urge to destroy the person who’d made her feel as she did. And then he realized—he was the one who’d done this to her.

“It is I who should apologize. I did not fully understand the situation you feel you are in until now.”

“It’s imposs—”

“I’m leaving,” he said at the same time.

“Leaving?” She pulled away from him and he allowed her to go. “When?”

“In a week, a ship sails to France. I plan to be on it.”

“So soon?” she murmured.

“I cannot stay here any longer. I cannot be a party to what my sister has become.” He touched her cheek softly. “I had hoped you would come with me.”

“With you?”

“Of course.” He forced himself to smile, but it felt brittle even to him. “Did you think I would leave without you?”

She nodded, mute in shock.

“I had hoped we could be married before the sailing.”

“It’s impossible, Alex. The laws forbid it. There is no way for me to marry you—”

“You may be used to these odd …
agreements
,” he said, cutting her off, “but I do not find them to my liking. We can be married once we are at sea, if you like. If you would rather, we could wait until we arrive in France.” He did not want to wait until France.

“You would truly marry me?” she asked, the wonder and confusion stark in her voice.

“You make it sound as though I want to give you a horrible disease.” He took her hands in his. How had he gone so long without understanding what she feared?

“I thought … ”

“Yes, well,” he said dryly. “I am beginning to get an idea of your thoughts. If I had realized before now … Suffice it to say I would have made myself clearer.” He squeezed her hands gently, feeling how small, how delicate they were in his. Knowing how capable those hands were. “Come with me, Armantine. I could not bear to lose you. In France we could be together. Think of it—a life with me. We could go to Paris—a city filled with the art you love, a life we could build together. And no one need know anything about you—about us—but that I adore my wife.” He could see it, truly. The vision was there, so brilliant and perfectly within reach.

But she pulled away once more. “I need time. I need to think. You’re asking me to leave everything I love—everything that I am.”

“Not everything, love. Your uncle would always be welcome in our home. But I am offering you everything I have. Everything I am.” He kissed her wrist again, then the sensitive spot in the palm of her hand. “We could have a good life in France. I will find a way to make us a life.”

“But your family—what will they think?”

He tilted her chin up so she was forced to look at him and placed the lightest of kisses upon her lips. She felt a jolt run through her. “My mother and father will adjust themselves to my choice. I’m no farmer, love. I never was. And they will welcome you. How could they not love you as I do?” And if they did not, it would not matter.

“It’s so much, Alex.”

“I wish I could give you more time,
mon coeur
, but I cannot stay here any longer. I have to return to the life I left behind in France. One that I want to share with you, if you’ll let me?”

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t yet find the words.

He smiled through his disappointment. “Here, I brought you a gift.” He pulled a small velvet pouch out of his pocket. “This was my grandmother’s. My family has a long tradition. She said I was to give this to my other half when I found her.” He paused, searching for the right words. “I’ve found her,” he said finally.

Armantine’s face softened, just a little, and he felt victory course through him.

He pulled a delicate chain with a small silver locket from the pouch. How many times had his grandmother shown it to him when he was a boy? How many times had he imagined this day? “This is my gift to you, whatever you decide to do. It is an old custom, but I have already put a lock of my hair in it for you. A piece of me for you to keep. We are two halves of a whole, Armantine. Nothing can change that.”

“I can’t,” she started to say, but he was already fastening the delicate chain around her neck.

“You will. You shall accept this from me, and if you decide not to accept me, you will keep it as a remembrance of someone who will love you always.”

Armantine’s hand closed over the locket, and she lifted it up to examine it. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

“Honor me by wearing it by my side?”

“I need—”

“Time,” he finished for her. “I sail in a week. There is much I need to arrange before then, so you shall have your time. In six days, I will come for your answer.”

She nodded, unable—or unwilling—to find the words.

“But know this—if you do not have an answer for me in six days, it will not matter. I would gladly wait six more lifetimes for you.” He cupped her face gently and kissed her.

His other kisses had been meant as questions, but this one was a promise. Gentle at first, it deepened as his hands framed her face and tangled in her hair. They fit together perfectly—his tall, lean form and her small, soft one—and he knew that whatever happened, he was hers completely.

He forced himself to pull back. “Remember that, love, as you think long into the night.” He was breathing heavily, and his hands shook a bit. “You are mine, Armantine. Nothing will ever change that for me. Nothing.”

He leaned in again, and just before his lips met hers, I awoke. It was still dark, and I found myself on the ground near the bench in the garden.

I didn’t completely understand what had just happened. I’d asked Alex for the truth, yes. And he’d certainly given me something. I’d been in his skin, seen what he’d felt … or, at least, I’d seen what he’d wanted me to.

I did understand one thing, though. If what Alex showed me was true, he’d meant everything he said to Armantine. And if what he showed me was true, he’d had no idea what he was
really
asking her to do—to give up who she was, to leave the only home she’d ever known. To risk getting on a boat with him with no guarantee that he’d marry her as promised.

No wonder she’d hesitated. No wonder he hadn’t understood.