The King of Bones and Ashes Read online

  Alice studied the portrait, her mouth open, her heart pounding. Though she wanted to deny it, it all made sense. Whenever she asked Daniel what his childhood had been like, he couldn’t remember the simplest things. Nothing. Not even if he’d gone to school. If he’d liked candy. If he’d had friends. He could rattle off some memories, mostly historical events, but the stories he told were always the same. Word for word. It was like he’d been given a list of facts to memorize. Facts that would fit what he believed to be true about himself, but nothing to show he’d actually had a life before joining their family.

  Alice could feel that the Chanticleer Coven’s magic was, at least for now, nearly exhausted, probably only enough left to ensure them safe passage out of the city. That Daniel still held together at all was testament to how deeply he believed the lie of his own existence.

  “Nicholas would’ve probably let him fade away by now,” Luc said, “but then you came along. And mother left . . .” He slid the painting back in with the others and then flung the sheet back over them. He was rough when handling the paintings, acting as if they meant nothing to him. But if he didn’t care about them at all, Alice realized, he wouldn’t have bothered to offer even this flimsy protection.

  He turned back toward her and Hugo, fixing her with his gaze. “You see, that’s who our father is. This is what he does. He builds people up. Programs them to his liking, and when they stop being of use, he tosses them away without giving them another thought. Eventually you’ll be one of the ones he throws away.” His eyes shifted to Hugo. “You both will.”

  Alice wished she could defend her father, but Luc’s words gave expression to something she’d always suspected. Always feared. Her father was loyal to no one but himself. He’d erased most if not all evidence of Alice’s mother from the world, and while he allowed Alice to visit her grandfather, he rarely dealt with Celestin himself. She’d often heard him mock his own brother, her uncle Vincent, with Gabriel Prosper, the coven’s second—but she’d also heard him curse Gabriel behind his back. She’d watched him pit coven members against each other in minor battles, then step in as peacemaker. “Then we should go. Go live with Grandfather.”

  Luc exchanged a silent look with Hugo before bursting into laughter. “Who do you think made Nicholas the way he is?”

  She glanced at Hugo, who was biting his lip as if to hold back laughter of his own, then shifted her gaze to Luc. He stopped laughing and reached down to touch her cheek. “At least we’ve got each other, right?”

  She bit her lip. Wanting to cry, but not wanting Luc to see it. She nodded.

  Hugo took her hand. “We’ll be leaving soon. You should head downstairs.”

  “Yes,” Luc said, his voice suddenly bright, “before Father forgets you. Here, take this.” He snapped his fingers, and the glowing orb he’d conjured floated down to her.

  “Go on,” Hugo said, “Luc and I have to talk, but I’ll be down soon. I’ll bring your case.”

  The light followed Alice as far as the foot of the attic stairs before it blinked out, leaving her with only her dark-adapted eyes to guide her. The voices below had quieted and grown fewer. She let her mind reach out, feel around to see who remained. Other than herself and her brothers, she sensed only her father and uncle.

  Curious, she descended the stairway and crept down the hall toward her father’s study. The door stood ajar, and bright streaks of light cut through the gloom of the darkened hall and raced up and down the wall across from the opening. Sugar sat by the wall, batting at the glints.

  While Alice still sensed her father and uncle in the study, the hall had gone silent. She realized one of them—most likely her father—had placed a spell on the room to keep whatever they were discussing from being overheard. She craned her neck to spy through the opening, but all she could make out was the twinkle of the rhinestone-studded buckle on Aunt Fleur’s vintage black crepe pumps. Her aunt was doing that thing again, where she was there, but not really—the same way she came to birthday parties or showed up for a few minutes on Christmas morning. That was why Alice hadn’t picked up on her presence. Alice’s grandfather told her the name for this gift was “astral projection,” though Uncle Vincent always referred to it as “discount travel.”

  The scintillations on the wall shot up and dove again, synchronized to the impatient movement of Fleur’s foot. The light the shoes were reflecting was probably hundreds of miles away, in her aunt’s house. Any other day, Alice wouldn’t have been able to resist barging in to ask her aunt, who wasn’t really there, how the light playing off her shoe buckles could be in two places at once. She understood that her aunt appeared as a type of psychic projection, but this part of the puzzle didn’t make sense to her.

  For a moment Alice stood there, as mesmerized by the dancing glints on the wall as her cat was, but the sound of the front door creaking open caused her to look up. At first she thought it had to be the wind, that the door hadn’t been pulled to properly after the other witches had left. But then she sensed a presence on the other side. A male presence. Sugar, too, stopped pawing at the wall and turned to face the foyer, curious as to the identity of the new arrival.

  The door eased forward, inch by deliberate inch, until it stood wide open. Alice’s eyes lied to her, telling her there was no one there, but her other senses insisted someone stood just beyond the threshold, beckoning her, inviting her to come out and play. She wondered if it could be a ghost, a real ghost, or another servitor spirit like Daniel, sent out by its master to brave the flood, but her instincts told her no. This visitor was something entirely different. And she wanted, no needed, to go out and meet him.

  Alice understood—she felt the entity on the far side of the door warn her—that she mustn’t be seen, or they’d stop her. They wouldn’t let her join him.

  She didn’t hesitate even a single second. Scooping up the cat, she hurried past the doorway as silently as Sugar’s anxious purring would allow. One of the magical wards her father had woven, now weakened by their fight against the hurricane, snapped, but it didn’t matter. She needed to get to her visitor. Standing beneath the gallery, Alice reached out with her final spark of magic, already scanning her surroundings. Finally, she sensed him. But he’d pulled back. He now stood near the rotating wall of water. Eager to get to him, she stepped forward, moving out from beneath the gallery and onto the sidewalk.

  Katrina had smelled salty as she chewed through the city, carrying the gulf in her grasp, but now the beach smell had faded. The air just smelled wet. The wind still blew strongly enough to whip up whitecaps on the water held back by magic, and even though the sky above the towering water still resembled the polished steel of their refrigerator door, directly overhead, within their circle of safety, the hot sun shone down from a patch of summer blue.

  Sugar struggled out of Alice’s grasp, her needle-sharp claws leaving fiery corkscrew tracks as she twined her way up the girl’s arm. Alice watched the thin welts rise, but she felt no pain. She couldn’t feel anything. An invisible barrier seemed to stand between her and all sensation—a barrier much like the clear membrane of magic her father had spun to hold the floodwaters at bay.

  The cat paused once in her climb, one of her oversize peridot eyes winking at Alice in rage. Everyone in the Marin household knew better than to bring her outdoors. Even on the best of days, the world beyond her favorite sun-drenched windowsill was a strange and alien place. The feline fought her way to Alice’s shoulder, where she perched and yowled in indignation at the sun overhead, unrecognized in its unfiltered state as the source of hours of golden pleasure. Then the cat fell silent, her head pivoting to the side as she stared at the exact spot where Alice had sensed their visitor. Sugar arched up, sinking her claws into Alice’s flesh, and growled. Then, as if something had startled her, she jumped off her perch and bolted toward the house. Alice’s eyes followed the cat as she tore across the lawn and disappeared inside.

  The visitor wanted Alice to laugh, so she started laug
hing—great, rolling belly laughs, as if the cat’s terror were the funniest thing she’d ever seen. Even though it wasn’t. Even though she didn’t want to. Even though she felt her own animal instincts kicking in. She struggled to free herself, to turn and run after Sugar, but she could not. She felt her feet moving forward, bringing her nearer and nearer the swirling wall of water.

  Just behind the water’s sheen, she caught sight of a bone-white Mardi Gras mask with wide and hollow eyes. As she drew closer, a series of bulges pushed out the surface of the water, five points pressing outward, forming a hand made from the water itself. It reached out to grasp her, its twin lunging at her from the other side. And then what she had thought to be a mask came to life, its lips pulling back, opening, exposing a razor-blade smile. She recognized the horrible face from the stories her grandfather would tell her when she begged him to entertain her with ghost stories on rainy Sunday afternoons.

  Babau Jean, John the Bogey.

  Alice shook her head. Her grandfather’s tales had turned to night terrors on occasion, and her father had always sworn to her this bogeyman didn’t exist. That he was just a story.

  Screams formed in her throat, but she couldn’t make a sound, and when she tried to pull away, the cold, muddy hand closed around hers, holding her tight. It began drawing her in.

  “Alice,” she heard Uncle Vincent’s anxious voice calling to her. “What are you doing over there? You know it isn’t safe out here. Come back inside.”

  She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t take a step. All she could do was turn her head to look back at him over her shoulder.

  Whatever he read in her eyes was enough. Vincent darted to her side, tugging her free from the hand’s cold grip and up into his embrace. He didn’t seem to see the hands made of the water, straining to snatch her away even as he carried her beyond their reach. He couldn’t seem to sense the hatred in the empty black sockets where the monster’s eyes should have been. “What . . . ?” he asked, giving her a puzzled look before she buried her head in his shoulder and gave in to sobs.

  ONE

  Present Day

  Evangeline brushed the cat aside without opening an eye. She’d been up till five a.m. closing the club, managing inventory, and then supervising the monthly deep cleaning, parts of which she’d done over again herself because the others’ efforts had failed to match her standards. Once a month, she expected everyone at her club to pitch in, from barbacks to bouncers to the dancers who needed to remember to bring in practical shoes or quit bellyaching over having to mop floors barefoot or in nine-inch stilettos.

  Third Monday of the month. All her employees complained about it, but she knew this monthly post-close maintenance was part of what made everyone feel they, too, shared a stake in Bonnes Nouvelles. And whenever anyone got pissy about rolling up their sleeves, Evangeline would remind the troublemaker that there were plenty of other clubs to work in. Ones that didn’t offer medical and dental insurance, childcare assistance, and financial planning and support for education. Any employee who didn’t see the value in what Evangeline was attempting—to raise everyone up together, to help them build financial security for themselves and their children, to give the dancers a life even after their boobs dropped and their asses sagged—well, Evangeline didn’t want that kind of employee anyway.

  She’d danced at the club to put herself through college, back when it was the Black Cat. Back when it was run by a sweat-stained, hirsute man-child who’d bought the club so he could live out a pubescent fantasy. He had packed it in two days after Katrina, claiming it was the storm driving him out, though Evangeline knew it was the work of running the club that had really scared him off. Five hundred dollars and a handshake later, Evangeline had taken over. Bonnes Nouvelles was hers, all hers—even its name a play on her own. She’d never get rich from running this place—in fact, most months breaking even was a crapshoot. This month was sure gonna be tight.

  Nicholas could’ve provided the float she needed, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask him. He said she was meant for better things, that running a strip joint was beneath her. What he really meant was that it was beneath him. He hated that she wouldn’t give the club up, but she hated that he wouldn’t give up leadership of his moribund coven. She guessed that made them even.

  “No, no, no,” Evangeline said as Sugar crawled back up onto her chest. “You know the rules: you want that nasty wet food, you gotta let Mama sleep till she’s ready to get up. Otherwise it’s kibble for you, missy.” Sugar only weighed four pounds, and Evangeline was so worn out, she decided to go back to sleep and let her beloved cast-off cat perch wherever she wanted. She loved the furry terrorist. And what with the way the cat acted sometimes, the feline was damned lucky she did.

  Sugar had been the one real constant in her life for over a decade now. The only thing left from the life she’d shared with Luc. The day after Katrina, Luc had brought the cat, a tiny, terrified refugee, to their apartment on Barracks Street. Alice and Luc’s little brother, Hugo, had been shipped off to stay with their aunt for the school year, and Sugar had somehow been left behind. They’d always intended to return the cat to Alice, but one event had followed another, ending with the unimaginable. Shortly after his siblings returned home, Luc had put a gun to his head and left them all. Worse, he’d done the violent deed in front of his little sister.

  That made Evangeline a castoff, too, just like her cat. But by her calculations, all that had happened around a thousand years ago, and the world had gone to hell and back and turned over on itself a few times since then, so who the hell cared anyway?

  Luc sure didn’t.

  Sugar batted Evangeline’s cheek. Twice. Evangeline peeled open one angry eye to see the cat’s own olivine eyes staring back down at her with equal if not greater intensity.

  “He’s here?” she asked, letting the other eye spring open. The cat kneaded Evangeline’s sheet. “Well, hell, I don’t know. I didn’t invite him.” She pushed up on her elbows, causing Sugar to slip down to her stomach.

  “No, I’m well aware you didn’t invite him either.” Sugar blinked one eye. “Yes, I did give him a key.” She had given him a key. Years ago. Even though it was largely a symbolic gesture, as Nicholas Marin hadn’t yet met a door that could keep him out. In all these years, he’d never once used it.

  Sugar chattered. This cat sure knew how to hold a grudge.

  “I’ll see what he wants. And you watch your language, missy.”

  Evangeline shifted, swinging her feet out of bed and down to the floor. She was wearing one of the god-awful oversize Bonnes Nouvelles Bourbon Street T-shirts they stocked for the tourists—half of the people who bought them never even stepped all the way into the club. The shirt’s front was graced by a scantily clad caricature of Evangeline herself, hanging from a pole, the back with the same image, smaller, along with the club’s street address. She rationalized selling the cotton atrocities by turning the huge profit back into the business. Hell, at least the shirts were American- and union-made.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked like hell. Her dark red hair was mussed, and not in the sexy way. She’d scrubbed her face clean of all makeup before she’d collapsed in bed all of three, no, two and a half hours ago. Her hazel eyes were puffy. But it didn’t matter. She and Nicholas had grown past all pretense. They could be real with each other.

  Her beloved cottage on St. Ann Street was Creole style, meaning there were no hallways. One room flowed into the next, so she didn’t even have to step out of her bedroom to spy Nicholas, hunched over and head in hands, sitting at her kitchen table. She stepped into the kitchen, not speaking a word. Words so easily got in the way, especially when dealing with a prideful—no, that wasn’t fair—a proud man like Nicholas. Evangeline visualized dismantling the wall she usually kept up to protect herself from her own empathic powers, dislodging just a brick or two from the mortar. She slid out a chair and sat down next to him.

  Nicholas looked
up, his eyes swollen and red. From crying? Unlikely. From drink. She could smell the stench of sweat and whiskey wafting off him. Without a doubt, he’d been wandering the French Quarter, working his way through the handful of clubs that never closed and were rarely cleaned. She suspected her house’s proximity to the bars was the reason he’d found his way to her door.

  Evangeline tapped into his feelings, trying to ease in, a dip of the toe to test the hot bath, but a wave of desperate and hopeless anger washed over her. She felt herself, her own psyche, spinning, sinking, being drowned in Nicholas’s maelstrom of dark emotions. She pushed back, both physically and empathically, her hands held up in a protective stance.

  He took no notice of her distress. He leaned back, smiling with his lips but not his eyes. Those eyes fell to her shirt. “I think of that night,” he said, “often.” The sunlight stole in through the window, lighting up the gray at his temples. “I saw you up there. Watched you gyrating. There you were, putting yourself on display, and at first I thought, ‘This is what my son turned his back on me for.’” He reached out and touched the hand she still held, without consciously intending to, before her heart. He caressed and lowered it. A quiver played on his face as the false smile turned into a real one. “And then I looked into your eyes. For the first time ever, really. And I saw your intelligence. Your power. Your spirit.”

  Evangeline always felt a pang of guilt whenever she thought about how things had begun between her and Nicholas, just as she did every time son and father crossed her mind together, or in too quick a succession. Truth was, she’d been bereft of any spirit. Luc had only just killed himself, and she’d still been hurting, bad. It was the kind of hurt that could cripple you, or make you do something mean, something stupid—real stupid—like welcome your dead lover’s father—a man who’d done nothing but look down on you, talk down to you—into your bed. Just to hurt the man who’d hurt you, and maybe to gain a little control over the man who thought you were beneath him. Maybe to convince yourself that you weren’t beneath anyone. That you deserved loving, not leaving.