The King of Bones and Ashes Read online

  “Enough history,” Marceline said, again seeming to walk through Evangeline’s thoughts. She leaned in, as though testing the viscosity of the air between them, then took a step closer. “We’ve come to offer you a proposition. A business proposition.

  “We believe,” she added, speaking up over Mathilde’s croaking, “that Celestin Marin’s death has created an opportunity, and you are in a unique position to help us—all of us, yourself included—profit from that opportunity.”

  “An opportunity for what?”

  “To lay claim to something that, by rights, should have been ours long ago.”

  “The book,” Mathilde said, or perhaps “The Book,” for the reverent way the creature cawed the words was surely deserving of a capital letter. “The Book of the Unwinding.”

  Evangeline couldn’t help herself. She started laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. It doesn’t exist.” These fool women thought she could help them get their claws into a fabled grimoire, a guidebook for the final days of magic. According to the myths, the witch who held the book would, in the end, control the last breath of magic and determine what was to come next. “The Book of the Unwinding is a fairy tale.”

  “It’s no fairy tale. It’s the reason we came to this country,” Marceline said, her focus softening as if she were remembering younger, if not kinder, years. “We carried it here, the three of us and your mother, to this city, to the ends of the earth, to the convent they built here to contain it.”

  “The Ursuline Convent—” Evangeline began.

  “You’ve never wondered”—Margot cut her off—“why the attic is fixed shut with nails blessed by the pope himself? What did you think they were keeping up there? Did you believe the stories about vampires?” She began cackling with laughter. Mathilde’s black beak cracked open with raucous caws.

  Marceline, cool as she appeared always to be, held up her hands, a signal for her sisters to calm themselves. “Those stories were created to frighten away the curious. Long ago. No one imagined we’d ever live in an age perverse enough that common men would run toward monsters.” She held out her hand, offering it to Evangeline. Despite herself, whether it was her aunt’s compelling magic or just her own desire for a sense of connection, Evangeline took it. She felt Marceline’s hand tremble as it held hers, and then her aunt’s ice-blue eyes widened in hopeful surprise. A smile rose to her lips. “You may not ever come to trust us. Not fully. But you must believe three things.” She tightened her grasp on Evangeline’s hand. “The Book is real. The Book has fallen into the wrong hands. And,” she said, looking deep into Evangeline’s eyes, “without your help, magic will be lost. Forever.”

  Evangeline yanked back her hand and burst out laughing. “And just exactly how do you think I can help you in your mission to save the fairies and unicorns?”

  “Your lover’s daughter, Alice,” Margot said, moving toward her. “So fragile, really. So vulnerable. She’ll need someone to watch over her.”

  Evangeline held out her hand, signaling the witch to come no closer. “Your concern for Alice is . . . unnerving.”

  “Oh, dear, you may take me at my word,” Margot said. “We mean her no harm. None whatsoever.” The words started in high singsong and ended in a croak, Margot already shifting back into avian form. “Just the opposite, in fact. She is very important to someone very important to us.”

  “I’m sure Nicholas will see to her well-being.”

  “Will he?” Mathilde said, focusing on a bug walking along the edge of the tile. “Like he did with his elder son?” She pecked down and bit into the insect.

  “Yes,” Margot added. “What was his name again?”

  Evangeline refused to give her the satisfaction of a response.

  “All we ask,” Marceline said, again in that maddening voice of calm reason, “is that you find a way to watch over her, to protect her. I sense you have a maternal nature. We’re only asking you to do something that comes to you naturally.”

  “Just keep an eye on her?” Evangeline hated that they’d gotten through to her, that the reminder of Luc’s demise was enough to make her question if Alice might, indeed, need protection from her own father.

  “Yes. Waking. Sleeping. Keep vigil over her.”

  “And just how do you suppose I do this?”

  “Follow your heart. I’m sure you’ll find a way.” Marceline’s human form fell away as if it were a burst balloon, and she reappeared as a raven already in midflight. A mad flapping of wings filled the small courtyard, and the three sisters were gone.

  Evangeline turned to find Sugar standing on the threshold, winking one eye up at the sky. Suddenly aware of the broken glass, she scooped the cat up then carried her back into the kitchen.

  The cat squirmed in her arms, freeing herself to perform a corkscrew leap that ended with a graceful landing on the counter.

  “All right,” Evangeline said, staring into the cat’s intense eyes. “What do you think?” The cat sat perfectly still, like an alabaster statue of the goddess Bast, but her mind was churning. “Well, no. I don’t understand either, but yes, I do think we should do something . . .”

  Guard. Watch. Protect. Evangeline could hear the cat’s mind struggling to express an unpracticed concept. Man not man, smells of thunder. The words came in a jumble. Sugar hissed at her own thought.

  Evangeline’s mind flashed to embroidered suspenders and ginger hair. “Of course,” she said, reaching out and patting down the cat’s bristling fur. “Daniel.”

  NINE

  An alarm sounded, and the machine rumbled to life. Alice watched as the mouth in the wall flicked its flayed black tongue and spat out first one case, then another, the carousel catching each and carrying them along, nearly identical bags festooned with only slightly less similar ribbons. Those standing around her—the strangers to whose destinies a common destination had, for the last few hours, bound her own—dove like hawks at the looping belt.

  She was home, if New Orleans could still be called her home, but even the airport felt like a hostile, alien world. Her own magic prickled her skin—an odd, unfamiliar sensation after years of being cut off from it. The temptation to use it, to try even the smallest act, was seductive, but she feared the magic even more than she was drawn to it.

  She had concluded years ago it was her use of power that somehow summoned Babau Jean.

  It was a matter of simple deduction, really. She’d first encountered him after she’d nearly exhausted herself helping the coven divert the hurricane. In the months she and Hugo had subsequently spent at Aunt Fleur’s house, they’d been forbidden to use magic—Fleur’s husband found sorcery disconcerting, at least when it didn’t directly benefit him. The entire time, there had been no sign of Babau Jean.

  When she and Hugo had returned home—and returned also to magic—the bogey had resurfaced.

  On Sinclair, where her magic had been denied to her, the demon had haunted her dreams, but here, in New Orleans, he had touched her. In the flesh. He had killed someone dear to her. Maybe she would have been better off, maybe they all would, if Vincent had left her on Sinclair . . .

  The belt came to a screeching stop, and a collective groan rose up. Half the flight still stood vigil for their belongings, and the sighs and grumbles and muttered curses reminded Alice that she was not, as yet, home. Even here, surrounded by a group of impatient, foul-mouthed bridesmaids bedecked in matching and grammatically incorrect “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez” T-shirts and out-of-season Mardi Gras beads, she hadn’t moved past that liminal space between where a traveler has been and where she’s going. It served as a mundane metaphor, she decided, for the vegetative state her grandfather Celestin had lingered in for over eight years, with only a feeding tube and respirator anchoring him physically to this world.

  Where had his spirit been while his body lay moldering in a private hospital? Had it been aware and trapped there in a moribund cell? On another plane? Perhaps it had been free to wander . . . Had he haunte
d as a ghost even before his body had finally given way? She shook her head to clear the thoughts, refocusing her mind on finishing the last leg of her trek.

  She’d spoken to her uncle from the Portland airport. He’d promised to arrange for a driver to meet her here. Alice looked up, casting an eye over the car service employees, who held either paper signs or electronic pads displaying their intended passengers’ names. Her shoulders dropped; none of those signs read “Marin.” Vincent had most likely gotten distracted, wrapped up in the arrangements for her grandfather’s memorial. Celestin would be going out in fine witch style—the typical period of mourning culminating in a grand witches’ ball. A real one like New Orleans hadn’t seen since before Alice was born.

  The funeral itself was to be a New Orleans–style funeral with music serenading her grandfather’s remains on the way to Précieux Sang Cemetery, and a second line joining in on the procession back to the funeral home. These “jazz funerals” were rare and usually reserved for actual musicians, but there could be nothing less, she reckoned, for the former head of the city’s once most influential coven.

  The flash of a memory struck her—she and her grandfather playing hide and seek among the tombs at Précieux Sang, the very cemetery where he was to be laid to rest in the family’s oven-vault tomb—the area’s renowned method of above-ground burial—which already held generations of Marins. Luc, too, must have been entombed there. Had his dry bones already been shifted to the caveau, the catch space at the bottom of the vault, to make room for the new resident?

  Alice sensed a shadow.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” a reedy voice said. Alice felt an icy hand touch her wrist, and she turned to see a well-preserved woman whom she felt she should recognize, though she couldn’t imagine why. It was almost as if her assailant—her subconscious fed her the word—were attempting to impress a feeling of familiarity upon her, to imprint a memory in her mind.

  Of course. A witch. Welcome to New Orleans.

  While Alice knew firsthand that witches lived everywhere, “The City That Care Forgot” enjoyed a greater concentration of magic workers than statistics would claim its general population should support.

  “Delphine,” the woman said, staring deeply into her eyes, her smile a tad too manic to instill the sense of ease she’d probably intended it to. For an instant, Delphine’s image jerked and splintered, like a lost connection on a video call, and Alice caught sight of the ancient crone hiding behind a wall of cosmetic magic, her skin like fine vellum stretched tight. In the blink of an eye, the spell reassembled itself, its weaver seemingly unaware that it had, even for a split second, failed.

  “Delphine Brodeur,” the witch added her family name, very nearly jarring loose a true memory. The fragile voice, the icy touch—the witch couldn’t hide these proofs of age, but to the naked eye she appeared at most a third—Alice estimated—her actual age. “I’m sorry, it’s foolish of me to expect you to know who I am. I only recognized you because you bear such a striking resemblance to your mother.” She paused, making a show of surveying Alice from head to toe. “Of course you don’t have Astrid’s coloring, but your features, my dear—you are your mother made over.” Alice felt a jolt of pride mixed with shame. Her mother had been a beautiful woman, but everyone knew she’d deserted her family to take the Dreaming Road. The Brodeur woman, perhaps picking up on Alice’s ambivalence regarding her mother, rushed on. “I’m a longtime friend of your grandfather . . . well, of your entire family, really.”

  “When last I saw you, you were . . .” She held her hand level perhaps three feet from the floor, allowing a more polished smile to finish her thought. “I sensed another . . . well, one of us, on the flight, but these days impressions are so vague, and your emotions didn’t betray you.” Alice said nothing. “It’s only I would’ve expected to sense a stronger feeling of . . . bereavement.” The statement, made with a calculated finesse, was intended to evoke a sense of guilt on Alice’s part.

  “Celestin,” Alice said, choosing to use her grandfather’s given name, “and I weren’t estranged, but I haven’t seen him since I was, well . . .” Alice flattened her hand and mimicked Delphine’s earlier gesture. “And he’s been incapacitated for so long. I have some good memories of my grandfather, but I mourned him years ago. His burial just feels like a formality,” she said, turning inward, feeling ashamed in spite of herself. “Maybe when I lay eyes on the body . . .” Alice’s words deserted her. She was struck by how easily this woman was working her emotions. Delphine had an agenda, but Alice couldn’t imagine what it was.

  “Of course, I didn’t mean to be critical,” Delphine lied. She tilted her head, reaching up to brush her dark bangs from her eyes. Like an act of sideshow prestidigitation, an imitation of regret appeared in Delphine’s eyes as the hand passed before them. “Oh, look at me. I meant in fact to be of comfort, and I’ve come at it all wrong.” Alice doubted if this woman ever made a false step. “It’s only that I cut my own travels short so that I could attend Celestin’s funeral—and the ball, of course. There was a time that we were close, your grandfather and I. Very close.” She paused, a coy smile rising on her lips. “I don’t mean to imply romantically, of course.” Her tone and expression telegraphed the opposite sense of her words.

  “He was so dedicated to your grandmother, after all. No, there were many women,” her voice lowered, “witch and civilian, who hoped to fill the void in his heart after Laure’s . . .”—she pretended to reach for the word—“‘confinement,’ but he remained loyal to her till her death. Your grandfather wasn’t ever one to let go.” She paused, her lips pursing. “Certainly he never let go of that grudge he held against the Perrault family. Blamed them, he did, for what happened to Laure.” Her gaze lowered and took on a faraway, contemplative air. “But then Alcide lost his wife, too. Didn’t he?” She looked up, curiosity playing in her eyes. “We never did learn what the two of them were up to, your grandmother and Soulange, to land the one in an institution and the other in her grave.”

  Another short burst of the buzzer and the belt lurched back to life, more suitcases spewing through the opening. A pale blue one caught Alice’s eye, reminiscent of the one she’d packed as a child, intent on saving her treasures from Katrina, but it wasn’t hers. “Would you mind”—Delphine wagged a finger at the very case that had attracted her attention—“grabbing that one for me? It isn’t very heavy, but I’m so graceless at times.” Alice nodded, sure that Delphine would topple over onto the belt if she tried to retrieve the luggage.

  Alice reached out and clasped the case’s handle, surprised by its weight when it tugged her forward. She caught the handle in both hands and gave a hard yank. It jumped off the belt and landed with a thud by her feet.

  Delphine laughed at her struggle. “I’m sorry, ma chère. Perhaps I overestimated your strength.” She leaned in, placing her glacial hand over Alice’s own, still wrapped around the sturdy plastic handle. Alice released the case, recoiling from Delphine’s touch, though the woman showed no sign of offense, or even that she’d perceived Alice’s distaste. “Or perhaps I underestimated the weight of those bricks I packed in here.”

  She pulled her phone out of an expensive-looking clutch, glancing down at the screen. “I’m having to rely on a service, as my regular chauffeur is driving me to fire him.” She smirked at the pun.

  She winked at Alice, though the humor fled her face as she pursed her lips and turned her face toward the wall of liveried chauffeurs. Tell me, dear,” she said, squinting. “Are any of those fellows looking for me?”

  “Yes,” Alice said, spotting the name Brodeur scrawled on a small dry-erase board. “That gentleman, there.” She motioned in the driver’s direction.

  “A gentleman, you say?” Delphine’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “What a shame.” She raised her hand, waving the driver forward, then dropped her phone back into her bag.

  He ambled in their direction, no sense of urgency in his pace. “Ma’am,” he said, addr
essing the Brodeur woman. “Miss,” he said with a slow nod to Alice. His large, pale hand caught hold of the blue case.

  “We’re not together,” Alice hastened to say.

  “But we may as well be. How do you plan to get home? May I offer you a lift?” She turned to the driver. “You can handle two women at once, can’t you?” she said with a flirtatious toss of her hair.

  He didn’t rise to take the bait. “Same address, same price.”

  Alice noticed her own suitcase being pulled off the belt by a worker who then set it aside with the other unclaimed baggage. “That one’s mine,” she said, using the case as an excuse to pull away. “Thank you,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder, “but I don’t want to delay you.”

  “It’s no bother, dear.” Again she felt Delphine’s cold, surprisingly steely grip. Alice turned back. “It would give us a chance to speak with greater privacy.” She paused. “There’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you.” And now for the agenda. Alice jerked her arm away, no longer in the least worried about risking offense.

  Delphine cast a wary glance at the driver. “Would you mind giving us a moment?”

  “Of course,” he said, nodding toward the exit. “I’ll be waiting for you by that door.” He seemed relieved to have been given permission to retreat. He scooped up the case as if it were filled with air and turned away. Delphine let a few moments pass, watching her chauffeur’s retreating back, then turned to face Alice.

  “It was really rather serendipitous, our meeting here,” Delphine said. The crone took a step toward her, slicing away at the space Alice had managed to put between them. “I would have looked you up.” She tilted her head, rounding her eyes in a parody of sorrow. “Some days after the funeral, of course, but before you skitter away again.”

  “I don’t think . . .”

  “It’s a business proposition, really,” Delphine cut her off. “Regarding your inheritance.” Her face hardened; her eyes narrowed. “I’m speaking specifically, of course, of your relic.”