The Book of the Unwinding Read online

  ALSO BY J.D. HORN

  Witches of New Orleans

  The King of Bones and Ashes

  The Book of the Unwinding

  The Final Days of Magic (forthcoming)

  Witching Savannah

  The Line

  The Source

  The Void

  Jilo

  Shivaree

  Pretty Enough to Catch Her: A Short Story

  A Peculiar Paradise: A Short Story

  One Bad Apple: A Short Story

  Pitch: A Short Story

  Phantasma: Stories (contributor)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Jack Douglas Horn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503901100 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503901106 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503901094 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503901092 (paperback)

  Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

  First edition

  For my darling Quincy, whose dedication comes years too soon.

  Daddy loves you, little man.

  CONTENTS

  CHARACTER LIST

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHARACTER LIST

  THE MARIN FAMILY

  Celestin Marin—Patriarch of the Marin family and deposed head of the Chanticleer Coven, once New Orleans’s most powerful and influential coven. Celestin, intent on commanding the power promised in The Book of the Unwinding—a legendary grimoire that reveals the secrets of how to survive and prosper in the final days of magic—murdered his own son and grandson, and slaughtered many of the region’s witches at the ball intended to memorialize him.

  Laure Marin—Celestin’s deceased wife. Obsessed with another woman’s husband, Laure encouraged her rival to work a risky spell outside the auspices of the coven, claiming it would protect their children by suspending the dangerous The Book of the Unwinding between realities. The spell led to Laure’s commitment to a psychiatric facility for witches and her rival’s death. Laure is the mother of Nicholas, Vincent, and Fleur.

  Nicholas Marin—Celestin and Laure’s elder son. Nicholas challenged Celestin to become the head of the Chanticleer Coven, but he has now lost the coven and the one woman with whom he may have found love. Nicholas is the father of two sons: Luc and Hugo.

  Astrid Andersen Marin—Nicholas’s missing wife. Though Astrid is generally regarded as a fragile, artistic witch who used her magic to escape the Marin family intrigues, her surviving children have come to learn she may be working with Celestin to further his plot.

  Luc Marin—Astrid and Nicholas’s eldest child, and failed challenger to his father’s position as head of the Chanticleers. Celestin murdered Luc as part of his plan to access the magic held in The Book of the Unwinding.

  Hugo Marin—Astrid and Nicholas’s younger son. Hugo has long relied on drink and drugs to mask his own sensitive nature.

  Alice Marin—Raised to believe herself to be Astrid and Nicholas’s daughter, Alice has learned that she’s the product of an affair between Astrid and Celestin. Only recently released from a sanitarium for witches, Alice has once again been confined, this time on the Dreaming Road.

  Vincent Marin—Celestin and Laure’s middle child. Murdered by Celestin, who then assumed his identity. Vincent was blessed with a lack of magic that for a while allowed him to lead an independent life of his own choosing. Unmarried and childless, he long tried to act as a father figure for Nicholas’s neglected children.

  Fleur Marin Endicott—Celestin and Laure’s youngest child. Celestin forced her into a marriage of convenience with a Washington up-and-comer, Warren Endicott. As that marriage comes to its dissolution, Fleur is determined to become her own woman. But after the slaughter of witches, she finds herself facing much greater challenges than building a new life.

  Lucy Endicott—Like a millennial Mephistopheles, Fleur’s outwardly superficial and undeniably spoiled teenage daughter feigns indifference, but always finds ways to improve the lives of those around her.

  THE SIMEON—PERRAULT FAMILY

  Soulange Simeon—The spell that led to Laure Marin’s commitment also caused the death of this once great Voodoo practitioner. Bad blood has run between the families ever since Soulange was found dead and Laure wandering mad out on New Orleans’s haunted Grunch Road. With her daughter Lisette’s help, Soulange’s spirit derailed Celestin’s scheme at the slaughter of witches. Soulange was the original proprietor of the famous French Quarter Voodoo supply store, Vèvè.

  Alcide Simeon—Soulange’s husband, musician. Blames the Marin family for his wife’s death.

  Lisette Simeon Perrault—Soulange and Alcide’s daughter, Lisette has run Vèvè since her mother’s death. Following the slaughter of witches, Lisette has renewed her commitment to her mother’s faith. Lisette doesn’t realize that she may be the one person standing between New Orleans and those who would sacrifice the city.

  Isadore Perrault—Lisette’s husband and owner of one of New Orleans’s premier landscaping companies. Although Isadore takes pride in having a true partnership with Lisette, he defers to her in matters of religion.

  Manon Perrault—Lisette and Isadore’s elder child, Manon is a no-nonsense self-starter who has recently completed her undergraduate degree in business.

  Remy Perrault—Lisette and Isadore’s teenage son. A visual artist, Remy has recently begun to attend college. Remy is involved with Lucy Endicott, a relationship both families tolerate, but neither celebrates.

  THE WITCHES OF NEW ORLEANS

  Evangeline Caissy—Stereotypes would imply that the solitary witch, a red-headed Cajun, is more temper than heart, but her past has taught her both patience and compassion. A former exotic dancer, Evangeline now runs her own Bourbon Street club, Bonnes Nouvelles. She finds herself at the center of machinations put in play centuries before her birth.

  Mathilde, Margot, Marceline, and Mireille—The sister witches. Having arrived on the banks of the Mississippi before New Orleans became an American city, the four sister witches are New Orleans’s first and oldest sorceresses. They are heartless, ruthless, and capable of changing form to meet their needs. Mireille, the youngest of the sister witches and Evangeline’s mother, died after falling for a storefront church preacher and turning against magic. The surviving three acted as Celestin’s accomplices at the slaughter of witches.

  Delphine Brodeur—The sister witches’ forme
r servant, Delphine was brought to New Orleans at the age of thirteen, over two centuries ago. Her attempts to exact revenge on her former mistresses ended in her own gruesome death.

  Frank Demagnan—The slight, though preternaturally strong, funeral director whose family has met the mortuary needs of the witches of New Orleans for as long as there have been witches in the Crescent City.

  The Chanticleer Coven—Once dozens strong, at the time of the slaughter of witches, the moribund coven had dwindled to the Marin family and eight degraded witches: second in command, covetous Gabriel Prosper and his sister Julia, the vain and punctilious Monsieur Jacques, the steadfast and sturdy sergeant-at-arms Jeanette, the elderly and addled Rose Gramont, Rose’s much younger self-appointed caretaker Guillaume (Guy) Brunet, and a brother and sister duo known as “les Jumeaux” or “the Twins,” who strive to function as a single, indivisible entity. Fleur Marin Endicott, who is attempting to rebuild the coven, believes the Twins to have been the sole survivors of the slaughter.

  Nathalie Boudreau—Part-time chauffeur, full-time psychic, Nathalie has a sixth sense that lands her in situations her good sense would tell her to avoid.

  Lincoln Boudreau—Nathalie’s cousin. Charming and flirtatious, Lincoln is a street musician who has Evangeline Caissy in his sights. He also has a secret.

  Washington (Wiley) Boudreau—Lincoln’s younger brother and fellow performer. Hardheaded and passionate, Wiley shares his brother’s secret.

  Babau Jean—Also known as “John the Bogey,” Babau Jean is New Orleans’s own born and bred bogeyman. Go on. Turn out the lights. Face the mirror. Call his name three times. He’ll see you.

  ONE

  Nathalie Boudreau knew better than to open that damned door.

  Still, here she stood in the service entrance of Demagnan Mortuary, and the knob was turning.

  She’d known better than to take the job as Frank Demagnan’s assistant, too. She’d had a bad feeling about it from the second she’d arrived at the mortuary for the interview. That feeling had only sharpened when she shook hands with the slight man, her eyes fixating on the horseshoe mustache riding his upper lip, its lusterless blackness in sharp contrast to the pallor of his skin. Frank had handed her a man’s black single-breasted suit coat with matching flat-front trousers and sent her off to the restroom to try them on. When she returned to his office, he had nodded with approval of the fit and offered her the job on the spot.

  She should’ve said no. She should’ve thanked Frank for his time, given him back his suit, and called Isadore Perrault about the job he’d offered her with his landscaping company.

  After all, the Perraults—Isadore and Lisette—seemed like nice people. Good people. But odd things had been happening around Nathalie, and to her, too, ever since the night she’d offered herself up as a chwal to the spirit of once renowned Voodoo queen Soulange Simeon, Lisette’s mother. Having Soulange ride her, having all that power zip around inside her . . . well, it had kicked something loose in Nathalie.

  Something Nathalie’s own mama had always spoken of as “the shame.” Something others called magic.

  Nathalie hoped it was only a phase she was going through. She thought if she steered clear of Lisette and Vèvè, Lisette’s Voodoo supply shop off Jackson Square, she might go back to the way she’d been before, that the switch Soulange flipped on might flip itself back off.

  And so she’d accepted Frank’s job offer. Oh, sure, she’d heard that little voice in the back of her mind chattering away and clanging cymbals like a windup toy monkey, but that hadn’t stopped her. That little voice wasn’t the one who had to pay rent and make groceries. The wages were the best she could find, almost as good as the security position she’d been let go from, and the bodies she handled were already bagged, if coming from the coroner, or boxed in a coffin, if headed to the cemetery.

  Nathalie had been working for Frank for going on eight weeks now, but she still found herself waiting to exhale, her stomach knotting up whenever the man drew near. There were bits and pieces about Frank Demagnan that didn’t fit. Like her eyes were hiding the truth about him instead of revealing it. She’d tried to pinpoint the source of her unease at least a hundred times, but she couldn’t. It felt like there was something that caused her to gloss over inconsistencies, and the harder she tried to get a grasp on what was bothering her, the slipperier her grip became.

  Still, a few odd things about him had begun to sink in.

  For starters, his grip was too firm for his delicate hand. He was way too strong for his size. Nathalie stood a good six inches taller than him and outweighed him, she estimated, by maybe twenty pounds, but she doubted she could lift and shift two hundred pounds, give or take twenty, of could-not-be-deader weight. Still, Frank managed to wash and dress the embalmed bodies on his lonesome, and he alone lifted them into their caskets. She knew looks could be deceiving. She had a passel of male cousins, guys she used to wrestle until her mama made her stop, who didn’t look like much dressed, but showed nothing but wiry muscle when stripped to the waist. Still, Nathalie couldn’t shake the feeling that if Frank’s shirt popped a button, he’d bleed out sawdust.

  She never had to spend too much time around him, though. Almost like he sensed and maybe even sympathized with her discomfort, Frank tended to make himself scarce after giving her a to-do list. Nathalie mostly just drove bodies—and occasionally the bereaved—to and fro, so the work wasn’t all that different from her part-time gig shuttling live passengers around town. The Demagnan clients were quieter, especially the dead ones, though she’d picked up one little old lady at the coroner’s office who’d cajoled Nathalie into taking her on a tour of childhood memories. Nathalie had watched out of the corner of her eye as the old lady’s spirit transformed into a vision of a young girl, dressed in a blue pinafore, with ribbons in her hair. The spirit placed a spiderweb kiss on Nathalie’s cheek and flitted off to wherever she was bound. Most people would’ve lost it, but the nostalgic passenger was far from Nathalie’s first ghost. She’d been seeing spirits since before she could understand there was any difference between them and regular folk.

  Nathalie had always been able to see things, to know things that she shouldn’t. That was how she knew something wrong—real wrong—had happened since she’d left the mortuary last night. But that wasn’t the only thing worrying her. Her hand still hovered an inch over the knob when it twisted open, turned not by her fingers but by sparks of light that had shot from her fingertips and spun around the doorknob. Now that was something new.

  Nathalie heard a soft click and the door eased open, its swing soundless.

  “Well, damn,” she said, feeling the dank air-conditioned coolness waft out and clutch her like a clammy hand.

  The service entrance opened into the embalming room, an unlovely gray cell tacked onto the back side of the redbrick colonial. No doubt the embalming room had been state of the art when built, but Nathalie found herself eying the asbestos ceiling tiles every time she set foot in the place.

  Nathalie poked her head in the room. “Mr. Demagnan?” There was silence except for the buzz of an overhead fluorescent fixture that bathed the room in cold white light. Nathalie dragged the heels of her wing tips as she stepped over the doorsill. “Frank?” she called out to her employer. She reached back to close the door behind her, but then thought better of it. Though she’d been in this room dozens of times, something told her she shouldn’t venture too far inside without a ready exit. It was the kind of something she knew better than to ignore.

  She’d been sweating outside on the ramp leading to the entrance; while it wasn’t a record high, mideighties was still damn hot for gaining on Halloween. Still, not more than two steps into the room, the sweat between her shoulder blades turned into an icy trickle. Her first thought was that Frank must have turned the air-conditioning on full blast, but there was something different about this chill. Nathalie felt it slithering over her, caressing—no, tasting—her.

  Nathalie cro
ssed herself, an unconscious gesture, a catchall ward borrowed from the only kind of magic her mother could abide.

  Her eyes scanned the room, darting from the empty embalming table to the aluminum mortuary cooler, the embalming room’s sole contemporary piece of equipment, stationed in the far corner. All three of its doors hung open. The now empty center tray jutted out like a mocking tongue. Frank wouldn’t have left it hanging open. He tended to be easygoing enough but was a stickler when it came to order.

  Nathalie sidled up to the cooler, taking a quick peek into the upper—empty—and lower—also empty—compartments. While she’d dealt with spirits all her life, she’d never really dealt with the dead until she started here. She still hadn’t moved past being creeped out by the work Frank did. Using the back of her hand, she pushed the center tray back into the cooler, then eased the compartment door closed until she heard its latch catch. She closed the bottom door next, casting a quick glance over her shoulder as she did so, certain she felt the weight of someone’s stare.