A Feather of Stone Read online

  Oh. Yes. Now I got it. Yes, there was a whole school of magick that probably dealt with spells similar to Melita’s. It was called dark magick, and we did not practice it. It had never occurred to me that among all the awful, evil, totally wrong spells of dark magick, there would be some that could work a spell like Melita’s. The kind of spell that would grant immortality to the witches present.

  And that could kill a witch too, I remembered, trying not to shudder at the memory of feeling Cerise die.

  I heard the familiar cheerful chugging of my little Camry and looked up. Thais had found a parking space in the street right in front of our house—we didn’t have a driveway or garage. She got out and walked through our gate, careful not to step on any plants.

  “So, you got it?” I asked.

  She smiled, looking exactly like me except for the clothes, and waved her new Louisiana driver’s license.

  “I’m legal now. To drive, anyway.” She surveyed the front yard, which was being transformed from a trampled, sooty, demilitarized zone into a mere inkling of the glory of Nan’s old garden. “You guys have gotten a lot done. Let me change and I’ll come help for a while before dinner.”

  “Great, thanks,” said Melysa, smiling at her.

  Having an identical twin sister was starting to feel a teensy bit more normal, but waves of “this is unbelievable” still flitted through my head. I’d spent seventeen years as an only child—having my entire world turned inside out in the last couple of months had made me feel like I was tripping sometimes.

  “What’s that?” Thais asked, pointing to the baby cabbages. “Not more okra?”

  I laughed. Thais was still getting her southerner’s taste buds jump-started.

  “Cabbage!” I said brightly, and she made a face.

  Melysa stood and brushed off her hands. “It’s time I was going, now that you’ve got a helper. Tell Petra I’ll talk to her later, all right?”

  “Okay. Thanks—see you soon.” I stood up and followed Thais inside. It was time I found out exactly what she thought about immortality.

  Black Like My Soul

  This had all changed so much. Except for the heat, the mosquitoes, the smell of the water. Those were the same. But the way the land looked, the contours of the canals and the rice fields and the rivers themselves—all that was different. The small trolling motor on this old wooden pirogue made an annoying buzzing sound, like a big, sleepy insect. Richard sat in the stern, one hand on the tiller, maneuvering his way through water paths that had changed ten times since he’d seen them. How long ago had he been here, to this very place? Maybe forty years? Thirty? Decades blended together.

  The sun was hot on his skin, warming his blood. Richard brushed his damp bangs off his forehead and lit a cigarette. He remembered Clio snootily telling him not to smoke in Petra’s house. He guessed Petra hadn’t told Clio she herself had smoked for roughly eighty years. He snorted smoke out his nose, feeling the heat, the chemical aftertaste.

  Up there. A quarter mile ahead, the flat, treeless rice fields gave way to a flat swamp. The canal was about to become choked with weeds, so Richard shut off the motor and pulled it in. He got out a long, broad paddle, its paint worn away, and began pushing through the weeds. Water hyacinths. Really pretty, shiny green leaves, pretty purple flowers. Clogging canals, ditches, and rivers throughout the Gulf states.

  But pretty.

  Like Clio.

  She too was pretty and useless—in fact, destructive. Look what she had done to Petra’s house. At least, he was pretty sure it had been her, her and Thais’s spell going wrong. Unless . . . Frowning, Richard flicked his cigarette into the water. There was a quick hiss, and then Richard remembered that littering was verboten nowadays. Damn.

  He took off his shirt and began to push the pirogue through the thick weeds. He saw a nutria, as big as a house cat, race across the canal where the hyacinths were so thick they could practically support its weight.

  Twenty minutes later he was clear of the canal and started the motor again. There was an almost-hidden entrance along here, leading to a narrow, snaking river barely twelve feet wide. Here it was. He angled the boat in and cut the motor again. Too many cypress trees and trailing underwater weeds. Easy to chew up your propeller. Most of the trees were new growth, but something about the general contours triggered his memory. This was the place.

  Mosquitoes buzzed around him, but he’d done a little spell that kept them off. He took out another cigarette and was about to light it when he remembered Clio’s face, her wrinkled nose. Swearing with disgust, he tossed the pack onto the flat bottom of the boat. God, what was the matter with him? She was stuck-up, snide, selfish—and still hung up on Luc, which only showed how stupid she was.

  And yet.

  When Richard was around her, his heart started beating again, and he suddenly felt more alive than he had in a hundred years. He remembered her long, bare, tan legs, stretched across the kitchen floor as she cleaned inside a cabinet. He remembered her in russet linen, the fabric floating across her stomach, her hips, at the Récolte circle. Something about her made him want to crush her to him, to bend her head over his arm. . . . But it would never happen again. She was out of his system now—those searing kisses at Récolte had cured him of her. He would never touch her again.

  Looking up quickly, Richard took his bearings. Had he passed it? He’d been so distracted, thinking about Clio. Swearing again under his breath, he peered ahead, trying to see around the next bend. No. This wasn’t it. He’d gotten lost.

  It took a seven-point turn to get the pirogue facing the other direction. Richard glanced at the sun—he had a couple more hours before the boat’s owner would return and notice it was missing. Richard began to paddle, putting his back into it. He was sweating, the air so still and damp that it couldn’t evaporate. He remembered he had a bottle of water and took a long drink, wishing it were beer.

  Now he was at the last fork. Looking at it again, he saw he needed to take the other arm. Grimly he put his oar in the water. That was what thinking about Clio would get him. Turned around. Lost. She wanted Luc? She could have him.

  Another fifteen minutes of paddling brought him to another juncture. He knew where he was now and unerringly took the left fork. Five minutes later he saw it: a thick, bent, twisted cypress hanging arched over the water like a bow. Long ago a length of chain had been wrapped around its trunk; now it was almost buried beneath the bark. Ducking low, Richard slid the pirogue under the arch. He stepped out into the shallow water, feeling the smooth clay squishing beneath his sandals, and tied the boat to a tree.

  The bank was steep but not high, and he pulled himself up it by grabbing tree roots.

  He reached the top and headed inland, pushing aside vines and thick underbrush. Again he checked the position of the sun, squinting up through the thick treetops. He had enough time, barely, if he didn’t get lost again.

  Clio was destroying his peace of mind. Why? She was nothing to him. Another tragedy in a long line of tragedies. Richard had thought he could solve that situation, but now he knew he was powerless. Something occurred to him, and he stood still for a moment, struck. If Clio didn’t get over Luc and Luc, that bastard, took advantage of that fact, then Clio could very well end up in the same situation as the twelve generations of women before her. Including Cerise. She could get pregnant. And then she would die.

  Two months ago, he hadn’t known Clio or Thais. He’d distanced himself from that whole line of doomed women, knowing that he would eventually hear that the latest version of the marked line had died. He would have felt bad for a moment and then shrugged it off.

  But now he knew Clio and Thais. Clio was the only woman of that line that he’d wanted, besides Cerise.

  A sudden image of Clio’s beautiful face flashed through his mind. He saw her green eyes wide with fear, her black hair streaked with sweat, her hands covered with blood. In a split second he pictured her face still and lifeless, her eyes open, all of her
wet, soaked through, as if rained on. Dead.

  The ground spun beneath him and he dropped to his knees. He closed his eyes, swallowing hard, and leaned forward, resting one hand on the warm ground. Clio dead. He blinked several times, trying to erase the image from his mind. It had been unusually clear and real, like a premonition. Slowly he sat back on his knees, wishing fervently that he hadn’t left his smokes back in the frigging boat. He swallowed again and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He felt shaky, chilled.

  He looked around and cast his senses, making sure he was alone. He felt nothing out of place—just plants and animals and insects. And a very thin, very tremulous thread of ancient magick, vibrating slightly in the air.

  He got to his feet and began walking toward it.

  He hadn’t had a vision like this in ages. It had happened to him only a couple of times in his whole life. The first time had been the afternoon before Melita’s circle. He’d been hoeing his father’s field, and then suddenly he’d seen Cerise dead. She’d been drenched with rain, and Melita had stood next to her, laughing. Blood was everywhere. In that moment, he’d seen that Cerise would die at the circle that night.

  Yet he had gone.

  Now he saw one of his landmarks, a granite boulder almost as tall as he. It would never have occured naturally in Louisiana. He looked around and found the second boulder, then the third, forming a rough triangle. The rocks looked as if they’d been here for millennia, and Richard wondered how many casual hikers had seen them and not realized that they were completely out of place.

  Inside the triangle, Richard started with the northernmost rock and counted off paces. He aligned his arms with the other two rocks, made a half turn, and counted six more paces. Then he dropped to his knees again, pulled out his folding shovel, and started to dig. With his first hard thrust, the shovel bounced off the dirt and flew up, almost hitting him in the face.

  He blinked, surprised for a moment, and then he smiled ruefully. Under his breath he said a disarming spell. This time the metal blade sank easily into the dark, rich soil. He dumped the shovelful of dirt to one side and pushed his shovel in again, digging further, further into the past.

  All the More Believable

  He certainly was spending a lot of time in cemeteries these days, Daedalus thought as he walked between two rows of graves. Some of them were simply aboveground cement troughs, built to hold coffins, then backfilled with dirt up to the level of the sides. Not as durable as covered crypts, which were little houses for the dead, but of course cheaper and easier to maintain.

  Cemeteries were always so peaceful. And hot. The sunlight bounced off the white marble and soaked into the cement, radiating out for hours after twilight. He didn’t feel anyone else’s presence here, at least no one he knew, but all the same he detoured past the weathered facade of the Martins’ crypt. Petra’s husband, Armand. Armand’s brother and his wife.

  Daedalus had been surprised when Armand had left Petra. Not that they were the picture of wedded bliss, but then who was? Losing all those children had taken a toll on them both, but that had been so common back then, even among witches. It would have been worse without all the protection spells and healing powers. Daedalus had visited New Orleans during those years, and there he’d heard of families losing ten children out of fourteen or every one of their infants, one a year until they gave up in despair.

  In his famille, they’d known how to prevent or delay the birth of children, and their child mortality rate had been one-tenth that of their region. Still, losing any child felt like too much, Daedalus knew.

  He retraced his steps, walking across the cemetery to the side closest to the river. Here was a small wrought-iron bench, somewhat rusted, but still sturdy. He sat on it, his hands moving in an automatic gesture to flip his coattails out of the way. He shook his head at his own foolishness. He was wearing a plain white shirt and gray-and-white seersucker pants. A jacket hadn’t been required wear for decades. Old habits died hard.

  He sat back, resting his cane against the side of the bench. There had been a time when most people carried canes as a fashion accessory, but Daedalus had gotten his first one when he was barely eighteen. His mule had kicked him hard in the thigh, shattering the bone. Petra had wrought her spells, saving his leg—on anyone else, it would have turned gangrenous and been amputated. But he’d limped. In the 1970s, he’d finally gotten it surgically repaired, but it had taken another fifteen years to learn how to not limp. Now he walked perfectly but still carried a cane. Some habits were too hard to break.

  The sun was low enough so that Daedalus sat in shade. It had been very, very interesting to find Clio Martin working spells last night. Spells he was certain Petra wouldn’t have allowed. Spells that sought the origin—or at least an understanding—of Melita’s power.

  How long it would take before her thirst for power, for knowledge, exceeded her loyalties to Petra? Perhaps not that long.

  Closing his eyes, Daedalus muttered a spell. It was the same spell he cast in this place every time he came here. Every few days whenever he was in New Orleans. He opened his eyes, feeling foolish again for his faint air of expectancy.

  There was nothing.

  Carefully Daedalus looked at the tomb directly in front of him, the tomb of the famille Planchon. His family. His parents and most of his other ancestors were buried down in Lafourche Parish, near where their ville had been. But not everyone. Daedalus’s brother, Jean-Marie, had been buried here twenty years after Daedalus became immortal. Immortal and yet unable to save his favorite brother. Now he came when he could to his brother’s grave.

  Not once in 250 years had he seen what he’d been looking for: some sign that his brother’s wife had come to pay her respects. That didn’t mean she hadn’t been here, of course. Just that she’d left no sign. And why should she have? She’d never wanted to see any of them again. That night she had left Jean-Marie as surely as she had left all of them, and Jean-Marie had never heard from her again. Or at least, not that he had ever admitted to Daedalus.

  Then he had died.

  The bottom of the inch-thick marble faceplate had broken off and lay in big pieces on the ground. He really should have it repaired or replaced. He read the words, as he had read them thousands of times before, and they made no more sense now than they did when he’d first paid to have them engraved.

  Jean-Marie Planchon. Born: 1731. Died: 1783. Beloved brother of Daedalus Planchon. Faithful husband to Melita Martin.

  Taught by Evil

  Time had stretched out into an unending emotional and physical pain that might very well drive him mad, Marcel thought. It had been almost three days since he’d been summoned. It had taken this long to get his passport in order, acquire a plane ticket, and get to Shannon, the closest airport. Three days of torment, as if spiders were crawling under his skin. The magickal urging of the summoning spell. He would feel increasingly worse until he saw Daedalus.

  Now his flight was leaving in half an hour—they were starting to board out on the tarmac. This small plane would take him to London, where he would connect with a flight to New York and then another one to New Orleans.

  He threw away his paper cup of tea and picked up his one small leather valise. He felt more out of place than he usually did, surrounded by bright lights, radio noise, children and women as brightly colored as parrots. He longed again for the monastery, with its silence and hushed sounds, the soothing gray stone and worn wood, the deep voices, the ever-present brown robes.

  He was reaching for the glass door that led outside when a querulous voice hailed him.

  “Father. Bless me, will you, Father?”

  Marcel turned to see an old woman, bent with age but still dignified, her silver hair neatly coiled on the back of her head. She approached him with firm steps, sensible brogues seeming like boats on her narrow feet. Her tweed skirt was worn but once of good quality.

  She smiled and knelt with difficulty. A gnarled hand reached for the hem of his ro
be. Before he could stop her, she had kissed it. “Bless me, Father,” she murmured, her head bowed.

  Marcel felt another pang of sorrow and loss so acute that tears started to his eyes. He had never felt worthy of this traditional demonstration of faith, but now somehow, tainted anew by his past, he felt even more fraudulent.

  Kneeling himself, wincing from the exquisite pain of this reminder of everything he was giving up and leaving behind, he took the woman’s hand and helped her rise.

  “No,” he murmured. “I am so unworthy, it’s you who should be blessing me. I should kneel at your feet. I am nothing.”

  The woman’s face was uncomprehending as he went on as though talking to himself. “I am worse than nothing, because I am made of evil.”

  The woman drew back, her faded blue eyes searching his.

  He saw her fear and forced himself to smile gently at her. Then he turned and pushed through the glass doors out into the misty rain. I am made of evil, he thought sadly, crossing the tarmac to the waiting commuter plane. I was born in evil, grew into evil, and was taught by evil.

  He climbed the slick metal steps that had been rolled over to the side of the plane. Ducking into the damp-smelling cabin, he saw there were only two passengers besides himself.

  He settled into a seat, gazing out his tiny window. He wanted to rush outside and fling himself to the ground, physically holding on to the land of his adopted home.

  A flight attendant offered him a drink.

  “No, thank you.”

  Evil. His darkness spoiled everything he touched. He put his head back and closed his eyes, feeling more wretched than he thought possible. Almost as wretched as that night so long ago, when he’d watched Cerise die. Everyone had felt the lightning shoot through them, filling them with light and power, but that same power had killed Cerise as she birthed her daughter. He remembered Melita’s triumphant face, flushed and beautiful. She had run off that night. She’d destroyed the huge oak tree and the Source. Marcel had tracked her through the darkness, like a panther. He’d caught up to her, and he’d struck her down. He’d stood there, panting, howling inside with anguish and grief, as Melita lay facedown in the mud. The rain had pelted her dress like bird shot. His heart, his life and love had been destroyed, so it was only fitting that he destroy the cause.