This Wicked Game

  She crumbled the piece of paper, throwing it across the floor. Then, she got up off the bed and headed downstairs.

  FIFTEEN

  The house was quiet without her parents home, the only sound coming from the ticking of the big clock in the foyer. She made her way past it, hesitating at the door to the store before using her key to open it. Despite the fact that the store was an extension of the house, as familiar to Claire as her own bedroom, she descended the stairs cautiously.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been down here at night, but it felt different. She had to force herself to continue, hurrying to the lamp near the counter as soon as her feet hit the floor, fighting the feeling that something was following her into the empty room.

  The light helped a little. She stood for a minute, looking around the store, reassuring herself that it was the same as always, that the bolt was down over the private entrance. Once she’d calmed her racing pulse, she turned to the books that lined the shelves behind the counter.

  There were three reference manuals on voodoo history. She flipped through them first, looking for any kind of reference to a woman named Sorina. It was a long shot, and she wasn’t surprised when she came up empty. Sorina was probably just a regular practitioner who’d been dealt a bad hand and went a little crazy trying to get revenge for the death of her parents.

  Claire scanned the shelves. There were a lot of spell and recipe books.

  She was going to be here a while.

  She pulled the stool over and started with the top shelf. Working her way down, she skipped over the books geared to specific kinds of potions. Whatever the Cold Blood spell was, she had a feeling it wouldn’t be in African Potions and Recipes for Love and Authentic Haitian Voodoo for Health and Wellness.

  By the time she got to the bottom shelf, her vision was blurred and her mind echoed with strange words and phrases. She was flipping through a slim volume titled Traditional Voodoo for Guidance, Insight, and Justice when a recipe caught her eye.

  It wasn’t what she expected. Not Cold Blood or anything even close to it, but a potion titled Gaining Wisdom and Insight.

  She hesitated as she glanced over the list of ingredients, thinking about the picture, the one she’d crumpled up and thrown across her room. Spells and potions didn’t work. She was almost sure of it.

  But there was the truth, admitted only in the privacy of her mind.

  The almost.

  Could she be sure? Would she bet the lives of the Guild on her refusal to believe, to try? Would she bet Sasha’s life? Xander’s?

  She read through the recipe again before moving to the front of the store for a red flannel gris-gris bag. Pulling its little drawstring open, she made her way back to the counter. Then she took several glass jars off the shelves and lined them up in front of her.

  She scooped some peach tree leaves out of their container. They dropped into the gris-gris bag with a soft rustle. Working her way down the line of jars, she added sage, verbena, and smartweed. She finished by unscrewing the lid on the jar of Solomon’s seal root chips, scooping them out with the little metal shovel and adding them to the bag, too.

  She finally dared to bend her nose and take a whiff. She was relieved to find the scent almost pleasant. Most of the concoctions mixed for the craft were rank, and she would be sleeping with this one under her pillow.

  She knotted the gris-gris bag at the top so the ingredients wouldn’t spill out and put the recipe book back on the bookshelf.

  She stood there for a minute, contemplating whether to bother with a spell. She could use the gris-gris bag alone. Lots of people did. But her mother and other members of the Guild believed herb and root magic worked together with spellcraft.

  Besides, she still had one more book to look through for the Cold Blood spell.

  She set the gris-gris bag on the counter and bent down, pulling back the curtain underneath it to reveal a small iron safe.

  She vividly remembered the day it had been installed, on the heels of a theft that had cost them one of Marie’s two remaining spell books. Claire had been fourteen when her mother had told her the combination.

  “What’s inside is as much yours as it is ours,” Pilar had said. “You never know when you might need it.”

  In spite of her impatience to go outside and ride her new bike, Claire had been flattered to learn that the safe had been coded with her birth date. She used it now, turning the knob right, left, and right again.

  The safe opened with a quiet pop.

  The book was there, just like she remembered.

  She removed it with reverence, her previous disdain for it seeming childish. Whether she believed in the craft or not, her great-great-grandmother had owned this book. Had written in it with her own hand.

  That had to mean something.

  Scooting onto the stool, Claire lowered her eyes to the cover, letting her fingers gently skim the cracked leather surface. It was a soft, mottled shade of green, dips and ridges where there once might have been letters or images.

  She opened the book and read the title page, penned by hand.

  Recipes, Potions, and Spells

  By the High Priestess

  Marie Laveau

  She decided to look for the Cold Blood spell first and go back through the book for an Insight spell when she was done. That way, she would be sure not to miss anything.

  Turning the pages, she kept her eyes on the title of each spell, passing incantations for love and guidance and protection and good health as she searched for anything resembling Cold Blood.

  It wasn’t there. In fact, just as she’d expected, there wasn’t a single spell for black magic.

  Sighing, she turned back to the front of the book and started again, this time looking for something that would work in conjunction with the potion in the gris-gris bag.

  She found what she was looking for about halfway through the book in a spell titled Request for Knowledge.

  She read through it, the words connecting with a memory from her earliest lessons with her mother. Claire would sit on the stool, legs swinging, hands and mind wandering, while her mother tried to force her to pay attention.

  Ancient Priestesses of the light,

  Bestow knowledge clear, true, and bright

  Grant me power and second sight

  As I move through darkness of night.

  When the words felt almost familiar, Claire pulled three purple candles from behind the counter. She struck a match and lit each one. Then, staring into the flames, she spoke the words of the spell aloud, trying to ignore the voice in her head that told her she was a hypocrite.

  She repeated it three times, the words moving through the empty store like a wraith. She’d never noticed the mystical quality of a spell before. On paper it looked trite, but saying it out loud transformed it into a living thing, a force she could feel.

  When she was done, she held still, letting the words find their place, like her mother had taught her. Then she blew out the candles, feeling oddly at peace with her decision as she ascended the stairs, gris-gris bag in hand.

  The house was still quiet as she locked the door at the top of the stairs. She was glad her parents weren’t home yet. Her mother would have been ecstatic that Claire had shown any interest in the craft, let alone actually tried a spell for her own purposes.

  Claire didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  When she got to her room, she shut the door and got into bed. Placing the gris-gris bag under her pillow, she turned out the light. She lay in the dark for a long time, trying to quiet her mind and force herself to sleep.

  Finally, she began to drift, the scent of verbena and sage reaching up to her as she moved into the landscape of sleep.

  SIXTEEN

  The house was noisy, conversation and laughter coming from every direction. She moved unseen
through the clusters of people, drifting down the stairs and into the front parlor.

  People were standing in groups, many with drinks in their hands, talking animatedly as children ran around them. One of them, a dark-haired boy, knocked a picture frame off an end table. A svelte woman in a linen suit smoothly reached out for his arm, her gaze steely. The boy dropped his eyes, picked up the frame, and returned it to its rightful place.

  The woman smiled, patting his cheek. “There’s a good boy. Now go outside and play, where you won’t do any damage.”

  The boy ran off. Claire, in her dream state, followed him down the hall, through the dining room, and onto the back terrace.

  Claire’s eyes were immediately drawn to a woman, standing with a drink in one hand, a loose dress flowing over her slender body. She looked different, with chunky shoes and her hair falling in waves down her back.

  But it was definitely Pilar Kincaid.

  Claire floated over the lawn, as invisible as ether, as she wound her way through conversations.

  A loud clap sounded near the terrace doors, and Claire turned, her gaze resting on her father, holding a fancy black camera.

  He smiled at the crowd. “Time for a picture!” he shouted. “Everybody get together over there, at the side of the house.”

  The crowd began to move, Claire’s mother shepherding everyone to the grassy area at the side of the Kincaid property. The hands of the smallest children were grasped by parents or older siblings, the wriggling little bodies sometimes carried against their will.

  There was some confusion as everyone moved into place, couples standing together with their children, the single people standing according to height.

  Suddenly, there was a prickle of awareness, the sensation of being seen. Claire followed the energy, her eyes resting on a pale, dark-haired man at the edge of the crowd. He seemed to see her, though no one else did.

  Claire recognized him immediately as Maximilian Constantin.

  He stood in the back row, in front of a little girl in a wheelchair. The girl was pretty, with deeply black hair and sad blue eyes. Her gaze was fixed in the distance. She seemed to be seeing something beyond the scene in front of her.

  Claire’s dad—young, with a scruffy beard growing at his chin, though all the other men were clean-shaven—came forward, issuing instructions to the group, telling them to squeeze in. Everyone did, though some laughingly protested.

  When everyone was finally in place, her dad backed up a few feet. “Everybody smile,” he instructed. “Ready. . . . One . . . two . . . three.”

  The crowd groaned as the flash went off in a blinding burst of light.

  Claire turned, spurred forward by some instinct, an unseen but guiding hand that pulled her back across the lawn, up the stone steps of the terrace, through the dining room doors.

  The noise of the party faded into the background until it disappeared completely.

  Now it was night. Table lamps were lit around the house, the crowd long gone.

  Claire drifted, finding herself in the study that was her father’s domain. Her dad was sitting at his desk, his hands busy under the focused light of the desk lamp. She moved closer, wanting a better look.

  It was the photograph, the one she’d seen him take on the lawn. He was putting it inside a wooden frame, pressing it into place and locking the clasps at the back of the frame, a penknife at his side.

  He turned the picture over, surveying it with studious eyes as he rose from the chair.

  Walking across the room, he stopped next to the fireplace. The wall was already cluttered with photographs, but Claire could see that her dad had cleared a spot for the newest addition. He placed it on a hook, leaning back to analyze its placement. After making a few adjustments to make sure it was even, he turned and went back to his desk.

  Claire floated out of the study, continuing toward the stairs. The house faded around her as she went, the edges of her dream-vision slowly fading to blackness.

  Then she was in the place between wakefulness and sleep, her mind already trying to grasp the significance of what she’d seen.

  SEVENTEEN

  Claire wasn’t even fully awake when she made her way down the stairs, phone in hand.

  The early morning sun streamed in through the sheer curtains on the windows, casting golden light across the hardwood floors.

  It was quiet. Her parents must have had a late night.

  She approached the door to her dad’s study, wondering if it would be locked. She couldn’t remember a time—ever—when she had entered the room without her dad inside it. But it was open, and she stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.

  She took a minute to familiarize herself with the space. A hulking wooden desk stood in front of two big windows. Claire was surprised to see a small love seat in front of the fireplace. She didn’t remember it being there, and she wondered if her dad used it to read or nap or if it was just one of her mother’s attempts at interior design.

  Her eyes settled on the wall of pictures near the fireplace. It was a kind of nook, shadowed by the bump-out of the chimney. There had always been pictures there, but Claire had never paid attention to them. She vaguely recalled them as old and full of people she didn’t know or remember.

  She crossed the room until she was standing in front of the wall, her eyes sweeping the collection of photographs until she found what she was looking for.

  It was there, near the bottom on the left, beneath a picture of some ancestor and above a photograph of her dad with her uncle Philip before he died.

  Right where it had been in her dream

  Claire lifted the frame off the wall, careful not to knock any of the ones around it to the ground.

  The photograph was eerily familiar. She flashed to the moment in the dream, just before the picture had been taken, and then to the younger version of her dad, placing it there and walking away. She lifted her cell phone, scrolling through the pictures she’d taken in Maximilian’s room. When she came to the group photo, she stopped, comparing it to the framed one in her other hand.

  It was the same.

  No, wait. Not exactly the same.

  She looked closer. She saw her dad, head bent as he installed the photograph in the frame, a penknife on the desk at his elbow.

  And then, when she looked even more closely, she saw the difference in the photographs.

  The one from the house on Dauphine showed all the members of the Guild.

  The one on her dad’s wall, slightly smaller, a sliver of the photograph shaved off the side.

  It wasn’t difficult to tell what had been removed on the version in her dad’s office. It was the man at the edge of the photograph, the pale, dark-eyed one Claire remembered from her dream, and the little girl in the wheelchair.

  Claire stood up straighter, the implications of the discovery hitting her like a lead brick.

  Maximilian had been part of the Guild. And not just someone who had a key and a license to purchase product. Someone who had been in the circle of power.

  Someone who had been one of them.

  She sat on her bed, looking at the picture on her phone, trying to figure out what to do next. They had a saying in the Guild.

  Once a member, always a member.

  The only person Claire knew of who had ever left the organization was Crazy Eddie, and he’d been kicked out.

  But something had happened with Maximilian, too. She didn’t know what it was or what it had to do with the letters in his bag, but it had been serious enough for the Guild to renounce him completely. For her own father to remove him from the Guild’s photographic history.

  She was getting ready to call Xander when the house phone rang from the hall. A glance at the clock told her it was only 8:00 a.m., early for a phone call on a Sunday. She hurried out of her room, trying to catch it before it
woke up her parents.

  “Hello, Kincaid residence, Claire speaking.”

  “Good morning, Claire,” a gruff voice said on the other end of the line. “This is Bernard Toussaint. I’d like to speak to your mother or father.”

  The voice was even, but there was an undercurrent of tension that Claire felt even through the phone line.

  “Um . . .” Claire looked up the stairs, wondering if she should wake her parents.

  “It’s urgent,” Bernard added.

  “Oh . . . okay. Hold on.”

  Claire headed toward her parents’ room, the phone still in her hand, and knocked softly on the door.

  Her dad appeared a few seconds later, shrugging his robe onto his shoulders. “What is it? Is everything okay?”

  “Uncle Bernard’s on the phone for you,” she said, holding out the cordless phone. “He said it’s urgent.”

  He looked surprised, but he took the phone. “Hello? Bernard?”

  Claire made no move to leave. Between the discovery of the picture and the early morning phone call, her curiosity was at an all-time high.

  “When?” Her dad’s face was very still. He sighed, running a tired hand over his face. “Did they take anything?”

  He made some more sounds, spoke a few one-word answers into the phone.

  “Fine. Yes. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up, staring at the phone like he didn’t know what it was.

  “What’s going on?” Claire asked. “Is everything okay?”

  Her dad looked over at her. “The Toussaint house was broken into. We need to get over there right away.”

  “I can come, too, right?” Claire asked, her mind already turning to Xander. This time, she had no desire to be left out of the Guild’s business.

  “Of course.” He headed back into the bedroom. “Be ready in an hour.”

  “Wait!” Claire called after him.

  He turned, meeting her eyes.

  “Everyone’s fine. Sophie has been taken to her grandmother’s.” He hesitated before continuing. “And Xander’s okay, too.”