The Book of the Unwinding Read online

  Alice shook her head, not wanting to risk losing all that she’d managed to find in this world, but after a moment, she gave in to the distress she heard in Daniel’s voice. She focused on Sabine, and although Alice noticed nothing untoward at first, she began to pick up a thin black aura outlining her.

  “The entity you’re looking at isn’t your creation,” Daniel said. “It’s a former dreamer who lost herself on the Dreaming Road. She’s donned a mask, assumed the identity you provided her, but she’s nothing more than a demon now. A vampire of sorts.” He paused. “It started with her, didn’t it? She came first, and then the others . . .”

  “We were the only two people in the world for a while. She seemed happy at first, but then she started to grow restless. She said it was unhealthy for the two of us to be so dependent on each other,” Alice said. “That we needed to get out. Meet new people. Make friends.” Alice wondered at herself. How had she never noticed Sabine’s aura? “She said we’d be stronger from it.”

  “I’ve studied these beings,” Daniel said, his voice calmer now that he sensed she’d accepted what he was telling her. “Watched their comings and goings as they pass through the astral, always seeking out the brightest lights to siphon.” He moved forward to stand beside her. “They were all once dreamers. Dreamers exactly like you. I’ve seen the lights of others go out . . . and I’ve seen them rise again in darkness.” He took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward him. “Celestin doesn’t truly love you, or he would have never imprisoned you on the Dreaming Road. Yes, the world he’s engineered is pleasant. It feels, I’m sure, like home, but this world is growing smaller and darker every day. Harder for me to find, and increasingly difficult for me to enter. It’s burning out. You’re burning out. Partly because of them.” He released her with a slight nudge that turned her gaze back to Sabine. “When that happens, you’ll become like these creatures.” His chest heaved like he might cry. “A hungry ghost, full of predatory cunning, but driven only by hunger, every shred of your humanity gone. Devouring any light you find, until all light has been extinguished and there’s nothing but eternal darkness.”

  For an instant, all guises fell away, and Alice caught a glimpse of the creature she’d invited into her world. The one she’d allowed herself to love. A gray corpse with sunken black eyes stood beneath the oak’s canopy. The corpse’s mouth gaped open in imitation of a smile. A withered hand waved her forward. The next moment, it was once again Sabine. Alice recoiled at the memory of this creature’s tender touch.

  Daniel must have realized what she was, at last, witnessing. “It’s no coincidence that Babau Jean built his paradise here.”

  Babau Jean, the bogeyman that did indeed exist. The entity had started off as a servitor spirit, not so different in essence from her own beloved Daniel. His creator had used him to feed off the life force of bereaved wives and mothers who’d lost loved ones in the Civil War, but Babau had somehow survived his creator’s death and become something more.

  “How long,” she said, “have you known about these things?”

  “Not long. Only since my last visit,” he said, turning her own words back on her. “Let’s try an experiment, shall we?”

  Alice glanced over at him. “What type of experiment?”

  “Starve them. Let’s see if ignoring them makes them go away.”

  “Alice,” Sabine said, her voice bright. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “That one,” Daniel said, “is going to be the toughest. She’s more invested in you. She’s had her hooks in you the longest.”

  “Alice,” Sabine called again, now sounding a bit peeved.

  “Don’t look at her.” Daniel turned her toward him. “Look at me.”

  “Alice.” Sabine’s temper seemed to be heating up. “I will not let you treat me this way.”

  “She’s already worried.” Daniel cast a hard glance over Alice’s shoulder. “I think we may be onto something. Can you be strong? Strong enough to let go of what you know isn’t good for you, even if it feels right? Even if it feels comforting?” He smiled and took her by the chin once more, this time making her nod. “Yes, you are,” he said.

  She hoped it was true.

  He dropped his hand and leaned in to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Now, I need one more thing from you. I need your permission.”

  “Permission to do what?”

  “Permission to throw a bit of force behind gravity. To help it bring you back in line with your rightful destiny.”

  “I told you,” she said, hugging him, resting her head on his chest. “I don’t believe in destiny.”

  He slipped from her embrace, then placed his hands on her shoulders. “But you do believe in me?”

  She nodded.

  “And you grant me your permission?”

  She nodded again.

  “I won’t let you down,” he said, already drifting away, slipping backward into the same light that had announced his arrival.

  “I know you won’t,” she said, shielding her eyes from the bright flash. He was gone. “At least not on purpose.”

  “I knew I would find you here,” Sabine called to her, and Alice glanced back to see her coming down the path. It seemed that, unable to process what had occurred, the demon had hit reset, an attempt to start again at the point it had last felt in control. It reached out for Alice, trying to catch her hand, but Alice pulled away. “Come on, you. Get a move on,” it said. “We’re already late.”

  “You go ahead without me,” Alice said. “I think I need some me time.”

  THREE

  Lisette Perrault held a small, square-edged bottle of black enamel paint in her left hand, and a brush she’d borrowed from her son, Remy, in her right. She stepped back and focused on the storefront window’s centermost pane, the frenetic parade of late-morning tourists making their way to and from Jackson Square nothing more than a kaleidoscope of color behind her own dim reflection. Between her ghost and the maelstrom stood Papa Legba’s vèvè, perfectly rendered, the product of her own work and intention.

  The Voodoo supply shop Lisette had taken over from her mother, the Vieux Carré’s illustrious mambo, Soulange Simeon, got its name from the symbols her mother had painted on the multipaned window that faced onto Chartres Street. The vèvès were pictographs representing individual loa, the spirits who acted as intercessors between humans and Bondye—the good, though transcendent, god. Three, going on four, months ago, the shop had been vandalized. A hoodlum had shattered all the window’s panes save one, destroying most of her mother’s painstaking work. Lisette now understood that what her mother had created there—a marriage of her art and devotion—was as precious as any of St. Louis Cathedral’s murals. She regretted that she’d never really appreciated her mother’s work for what it was until it was too late.

  One restoration down, and a slew more to go. Still, her mama would’ve been proud to see the first. Lisette retrieved the paint bottle’s lid. She twisted it closed and dropped the brush into a jar of paint thinner Remy had provided her.

  Her son had volunteered to recreate the vèvès. He would’ve done a beautiful job, she had no doubt about it, and likely could have finished in no more than a few hours, but she needed to do this herself.

  For years, Lisette’s honoring of the loa had been perfunctory, performed not out of reverence, but half out of guilt and half out of a desire to keep up appearances for the business’s sake. Her faith had been severely shaken by her mother’s death. No. Her mother’s murder at the hands of Laure Marin. If the loa hadn’t protected her mother, a dedicated mambo, how powerful could they be?

  Then came Katrina. The day the levees broke, what was left of Lisette’s beliefs went with them. She and Isadore had packed up the kids and headed out of the storm’s path, but her father had stubbornly insisted on hanging on, riding out the storm. Right here in Vèvè, where he felt closest to her mother. When they returned to New Orleans, they found him holed up here, hi
ding out to avoid evacuation, safe but a bit screwy from loneliness and hunger. This store, in the very spot her mother had felt guided by the loa to open it, still stood strong. Upon discovering that the roof of their own house had been ripped off by the winds, they joined him here, the whole family sharing shelter until they could get back on their feet. Now Lisette had to wonder how she hadn’t seen this shop itself as a gift of the loa.

  It had taken more than a simple sign to rekindle her faith. It had required a night spent with her mother’s spirit and a visit from an emissary of Papa Legba, the guardian of the crossroads between the living and the dead, to convince her to drop her false pride and let herself believe again. She’d made a vow, both to her mother and to the loa themselves, to honor them. To herself, she’d made the promise that she wouldn’t link her continued devotion to the loa to world events turning out the way she felt they should.

  She’d thrown herself into a contemplation of the loa, choosing to make the recreation of the vèvès a chance to reconnect with them, a penance and an act of devotion. Such an intention required preparation.

  Marie Laveau, New Orleans’s nearly sainted Voodoo queen, had once conducted Saint John’s Eve ceremonies on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain near the mouth of the Bayou St. John. For three moons Lisette had purified herself, bathing her head with water from the nexus where Pontchartrain spills into the Bayou St. John. There was no easy land access to that spot, so Lisette had paid her daughter’s friend, the young gay fellow who sold Manon five-dollar coffees, to paddle his kayak up Bayou St. John to the spill gate to fetch the water.

  Then she fasted, feasted, and anointed herself with the water. She lit candles and danced and drank rum until her head spun—until she sensed someone else join her in her body and look out through her eyes. That was when she knew the door she had slammed shut was once again open. She was finally ready to recreate her mother’s vèvès, and, as practice dictated, the first would be that of Papa Legba.

  She’d practiced drawing, then painting, his vèvè over and over again, until she could do it backward from memory, until the movements came to her as natural, so that she could recreate it, as her mother had painted the window’s original vèvès, in reverse. Lisette had always believed her mother had done so to allow passersby to see them from the correct vantage point. Now she realized this assumption was, at least partly, wrong.

  “They’re going to want to see out,” her mother had said, turning back from her work to smile at Lisette, at the time a spindly preschooler. Lisette had all but forgotten that moment until a comment from an unlikely source—Nathalie, the driver who’d picked up her and her mother’s spirit out by Grunch Road. The younger white woman, who didn’t know a damned thing about Voodoo, said that as a girl she’d been afraid to pass by the shop because of the faces staring out from it. Nathalie’s words had offered Lisette a long-overdue revelation—the vèvès not only symbolized the loa; they summoned them.

  Their restoration would be the work of her hand alone, but she’d enlisted her husband Isadore to build a new altar, a solid oak one to withstand the years, and her son to decorate it. She’d expected Remy to work directly on the wood, but he returned two days later with a white linen altar cloth, the image of her mother embroidered at its center. The image was surrounded by a blood-red circle, from which six- to nine-inch strands of silk thread radiated out like veins, their edges intertwining. He’d chosen to honor his ancestor in a flash of brilliance that made Lisette begin to see her own mother as one of the loa, a personal connection to the spirits that would make any lapse of veneration impossible. It was a damned masterpiece, and she’d told Remy as much.

  “You think everything I do is a masterpiece,” he’d said, trying to sound cool. “It’s all done by computer now. I did the drawing and specified the colors, but the computer did the needlework.” His words were full of modesty, but she could see the delight in his eyes.

  She cast another look at her own masterpiece—Remy’s talent hadn’t just dropped out of the air—only to witness another now all-too-familiar sight, her father, Alcide, weaving his way down Chartres Street toward the shop. A wide and foolish smile stretched his lips as he waved a brown-paper-bagged bottle around before him like he was captain of a one-man krewe, intent on making his very own Mardi Gras parade.

  Ever since the burial of Celestin Marin’s physical body, Lisette’s father’s visits were like thunderstorms—they caused little lasting damage, but they were loud and sometimes frightening. With a sigh, she backed away from the window and crossed the room to step behind the counter. Using it as a fortress, she folded her arms across her chest, bracing herself.

  The bell over the door clanged, announcing her father’s arrival. He stumbled over the threshold and barreled toward one of the shelves. He managed to catch himself, but dropped the bottle in the process.

  Lisette heard a pop as the glass shattered inside the paper bag. The shelf hid her view, but she could smell the alcohol seep out. Sour mash whiskey, she guessed from the scent. Her father’s face clouded over as he stepped back and stared down at the waste. He began to stoop.

  “Leave it,” Lisette said. The two sharp words betrayed her anger. The last thing she needed was for him to cut himself.

  He looked at her with wide, confused eyes, then his jaw tightened. “You watch your tone, missy. I am still your father.”

  “Really?” Lisette said, grabbing the sturdy gray metal garbage can her mother had bought, and stomping up to him. “’Cause you sure don’t act like him. My father is a stand-up man, not some stumbling drunk.” She knelt beside him, incapable of looking at his face, and focused instead on his left shoe, now an island in the growing puddle of alcohol. She lifted the dampened paper bag by its corners, shifting it with care and dropping it and the bottle it still held into the can.

  “I came here,” he said in a stentorian voice, his volume prompting Lisette to glare up at him. “I came here to talk to you. And you, you’re gonna listen.”

  She snatched up the can and stepped wide around him, holding up one hand behind her to signal she didn’t want to hear a thing he had to say. He lunged at her, his movements far sprier than his age and intoxication should allow. He grabbed her hand and spun her back around, the movement tugging and twisting her shoulder.

  She cried out, shocking him sober. He released her.

  She lowered the garbage can to the floor by her feet, though she never took her eyes off him. He must have seen a reflection of himself in them, because his complexion turned gray. “I’m sorry,” he said, his hand now trembling as he reached out to her. “I’m sorry, baby. It was an accident. Popa would never hurt you on purpose.”

  “And still,” she said, reaching up and rubbing her tender left shoulder, “I’m hurt.” She worked it around, deciding the injury wasn’t serious, but she was hurt and angry enough to play it up all the same.

  He took a step toward her. “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Why,” she said, cutting him off, “don’t you go on and speak your piece? Or”—she swatted away his hand—“do you think you’ve done enough damage for one day?”

  His eye twitched, and a line formed between his brows. She could tell he was feeling good and guilty. He started to turn away, but then his temper flared up again. “I’m not the one doing damage,” he said, pointing at her. “I’m not the one letting Remy see that Lucy girl.”

  “So that’s what this is about,” she said, retrieving the can and walking away from him. “Remy is eighteen now.” She reached the counter and dropped the can for effect. The rocking bang followed by the crash of shifting shards of glass was everything she’d hoped it would be. She moved behind the counter, placing her hands on it and leaning forward. “He’s a grown man. Maybe he isn’t old enough to drink”—she paused on the word—“but he’s sure old enough to date anyone he damned well pleases.” She straightened. “You of all people should know the best way to drive young lovers together is by trying to pry them apart.”
/>   “Oh, I know all right. I remember you running after Celestin’s son, Vincent. You’re the one who got us tangled up with that family in the first place.”

  His meaning began to dawn on her, and she shook her head. “Oh, no, Daddy, that is not fair.”

  “Not fair?” he said, drawing nearer. She could see tiny veins on his temples popping out. “What’s not fair is that your mama is dead. Dead because of Laure Marin.”

  A loss of life. A loss of mind. A loss of love. A loss of fertility. The fourfold sacrifice Laure had convinced Lisette’s mother it had been necessary to make to protect their children from the dark and seductive magic contained in The Book of the Unwinding.

  The Book, hidden away for centuries and fettered by a force that held back its darkness, had passed into folklore. But then something—and as far as Lisette could ascertain, no one seemed sure what—changed, and the Book began to call out once more. It had, Laure claimed, begun grooming her daughter-in-law, Astrid, to help manifest its evil in this world.

  Laure’s professed goal had been to place the Book beyond the reach not only of Astrid, but of any other the Book might seek to beguile. She succeeded in painting a dire enough future that Lisette’s mother believed it was worth laying down her own life to constrain the Book once more by locking it between dimensions. Securing it so that even if the ward were broken, only someone capable of existing on the two planes at once could ever lay claim to it.

  While Laure’s concerns about Astrid and the Book may have, in fact, been true, Lisette remained convinced Laure had turned these developments to her own selfish end. If the woman had held any true concern for her children, it had come secondary to her desire for Lisette’s father. Laure’s obsession was, Lisette privately thought, what had set all of this mess into motion. The woman had believed she would be strong enough to withstand the madness she was courting. That she would find a way to capture Alcide Simeon’s grieving heart and make it her own once she’d eliminated the woman she saw as her rival. Still, in the end, neither family had been left untouched by the matriarchs’ spell. Laure was found wandering around Grunch Road, lost in a nightmare from which she’d never awaken.