Everyone stood, and Marcel stood also. He had this rear pew almost to himself—only an old woman shared the very far end. A strand of jet beads, her rosary, dangled from one hand. Automatically Marcel tapped his pockets, but the plain wooden beads he’d once carried everywhere were no longer tucked into his monk’s robe.
It was time for the sermon, and the priest ascended into the pulpit and turned on the microphone. Marcel sighed, wishing for the churches of a hundred years ago, a hundred and fifty. As the priest began to talk about how they, as ordinary people, could embody the reflection of Christ in everyday living, Marcel let his mind wander.
Axelle, Claire, and Sophie.
Three women he now unexpectedly found himself in relationships with. Three women he doubted he’d spoken to more than a dozen times in two hundred years. Axelle was still self-serving and duplicitous but also unexpectedly shrewd and generous. Claire he’d written off when she was fifteen and already had a reputation as a loose skirt. God knew she’d only gone downhill from there—with each new age of civilization, it seemed she found new opportunities for depravity. Now she seemed—funloving and lovelorn. She was in love with Jules. Now that he finally recognized it, Marcel, looking back, couldn’t remember a time when Claire had not apparently been in love with Jules.
And Jules wouldn’t give in to her, for some reason. Why? Marcel saw love in his eyes as well. What was holding Jules back? Now, at last, Marcel could see, if you loved someone for hundreds of years and they didn’t love you back, you might very well want to try every diversion you could to take your mind off it. When he looked at it that way, it was much easier to empathize with Claire and even admire her courage.
And then … Sophie. Long, long ago, Sophie had loved him, had pined for him. And he’d never seen it. He’d focused his sights on one person—Cerise—and had never looked to either side.
People around him stood again, and Marcel mindlessly began singing the closing hymn. The priest in his white robe and embroidered alb passed, palms locked together in prayer as he sang. Everyone filed out after him: deacon, altar boys, choir.
Sophie had been a lovely girl. Marcel grimaced—clearly, she was lovely still. How long had she pined for him before giving up? How many shy signals, glances, slight overtures had she made toward him that he hadn’t noticed?
Almost groaning, Marcel rubbed his temples and waited to exit his pew.
Sophie. He had missed out.
Marcel went out into a humid, too-warm Sunday afternoon. It was thickly overcast, and the breeze carried the scent of rain. He wandered aimlessly onto the wide slate flagstones that bordered Jackson Square.
Sophie was beautiful, in a quiet, deeply feminine way. She was one of the few truly nice people he’d ever known, someone truly without avarice or meanness or anger.
What would his life have been like if he’d loved Sophie instead of Cerise? He could have been loved instead of given a number and been squeezed in whenever Richard wasn’t in her bed.
Acid burned his stomach, and he forced himself to control his anger. It had all been so long ago. Richard had been just a kid. Only recently had Marcel actually realized that. Richard had been only fifteen. Cerise had been four years older—she should have known better. In a way, she’d taken advantage of Richard. And Marcel too, both of them. Gotten what she wanted without giving either of them what they’d wanted.
Marcel found himself on the corner of St. Ann and Chartres.
Sophie and Manon had broken up—possibly for good.
Marcel turned and headed deeper into the Quarter. Maybe Axelle would want to get some lunch somewhere. Or Claire and Jules.
Marcel’s mouth quirked in a slightly surprised smile. He had friends.
WWCD?
“Marcel, huh? I have to admit, I missed that one.” Claire handed Sophie a Snickers bar, then lay down on Jules’s pink futon sofa. She ripped open the end of her own Snickers and took a bite.
Sophie nodded miserably and looked at the candy bar as if needing instructions.
“Just eat it, honey,” said Claire, chewing.
Looking like she had nothing to lose, Sophie carefully undid the wrapper and took a tentative bite. Claire tried hard not to roll her eyes. It was a frigging Snickers bar, for God’s sake. What rock had Sophie been living under?
Jules hadn’t had any Kleenex, so a roll of toilet paper sat next to Sophie’s chair, along with a paper grocery bag of used tissue.
“I never wanted anyone to know,” Sophie said. Her voice was thick with chocolate and crying. “I only told Manon because—” She sniffled again and took another bite of peanuty goodness. “I told her after we became … friends, years after the rite.”
“Hmm.” Claire carefully scratched her nose next to her silver nose ring. “Well, Marcel knows now. The question—well, one of the questions—is, are you and Manon going to patch things up?”
Sophie looked stricken, her face gaunt and pale. “I don’t know,” she whispered. She shook her head and bit off more Snickers. “I thought for sure we would—we always do. But now I don’t know. Manon says she’ll never forgive me.”
“Yeah,” Claire said quickly, wanting to steer the conversation to a less weepy topic. “But if you don’t get back with Manon, how about hooking up with Marcel? God knows he’s still single.”
Sophie looked struck by the thought. Had it not occurred to her? Maybe Claire should hand over the “dense” award.
“I don’t know,” Sophie said, seeming lost. “But he doesn’t care about me—he doesn’t know I’m alive.”
“He does now,” Claire assured her.
“And—he took a vow of celibacy when he became a monk,” Sophie went on. “I remember hearing that.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “He’s a guy.”
“And I still love Manon,” Sophie said, her voice wavering.
Sitting up, Claire balled her candy bar wrapper and threw it across the small room into Sophie’s tissue bag. “Okay, so you still love her. She’d be a hard habit to break. But if she’s ready to move on, then you have no choice but to move on too. And if you don’t want a regular guy, one with a short life span, then Marcel might be the way to go.”
“I can’t even think about it now,” said Sophie, brushing her long dark hair off her face.
“Well, plenty of time,” Claire said, making a massive understatement. “The thing about unrequited love is that it doesn’t tend to go away.”
She felt Sophie looking at her and hoped her voice hadn’t sounded really bitter.
“Where’s Jules?” Sophie asked, following Claire’s train of thought.
“He got a job,” Claire said. “Inexplicably.”
Claire looked at her bright red toenails, mulling over the surprising fact that she and Sophie the Ice Maiden actually had something in common these days.
“Have you ever been with a guy?” she asked.
Sophie blushed. “No. When I was younger—well, it wasn’t done.” Then she seemed to remember that Claire had in fact done it quite a bit, with boys and men in their village. She hurried on. “I just couldn’t—with my parents watching me all the time. Then I was in love with Marcel, for a long, long time. When he disappeared after the rite, I wondered if he was with Melita—if he’d run away with her, if they were lovers. Maybe he’d loved them both.”
“I doubt it,” said Claire.
“But he was gone. So even though Cerise was … dead, Marcel wasn’t there anyway. I mean, I wasn’t happy about Cerise—what had happened to her. It was horrible. But if she was gone, then maybe Marcel would …” Sophie let out a sigh. “But no one knew where he was. And then I became friends with Manon. With the way she looks, she needs someone to be with her—help her get stuff done. She’s had it really hard.” Her voice broke again.
“I bet.” Claire didn’t think about Manon and Richard much, how much harder their lives had been. Especially Manon. Richard could almost pass for his late teens, if you didn’t look at him too closely.
“I guess that’ll get easier now,” Claire said.
Sophie looked at her, sniffling. “What do you mean?”
Claire shrugged. “They’re aging.”
For a minute Sophie just looked at her uncom-prehendingly. She blinked a couple of times and then frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Now Claire was surprised. She would’ve thought this news would have spread like wildfire. “Richard and Manon are aging since the rite. I saw Richard last night or this morning, around three or so, coming out of Lafitte’s. It took me a second to figure out what was different. But then I realized he looked older. When’s the last time you saw Manon?”
“Friday, at Axelle’s. She hasn’t let me come over since then.”
“Today’s Monday—a week since the rite. When you see her, you’ll notice it.”
“But that’s impossible! Why didn’t you say this earlier?”
“I thought you knew—I thought everyone could tell. It seems to be just those two who are actually aging. But apparently Daedalus looks like crap, and Petra definitely seems weaker, according to Luc. He’s worried about her.”
“But I can’t believe it,” said Sophie, standing up and starting to pace. “It isn’t possible.”
Claire shrugged. “Ooh, must be magick.”
“Richard’s aging?”
“Either that or all the alcohol’s really taking effect on him.”
“Manon?”
“Yeah. She’s taller, older. She looks like she’s around fifteen now.”
“How long will this last?” Sophie’s brown eyes were wide. “When will it stop? What caused it?”
Claire made checkmarks in the air. “Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.”
“I’ve got to go see Manon!” Sophie grabbed her lavender sweater and her purse. “She wouldn’t be dependent; she would feel more equal. She might not even want to die. This changes everything!” She hurried to the door.
“It doesn’t change the fact that you betrayed her.” Claire didn’t pull punches.
Sophie stopped dead at the door and looked around, stricken.
“Her age wasn’t the main problem,” Claire went on, more gently. “The problem was that you put yourself first. You deliberately screwed up her plan, blew off something she really wanted because it wasn’t what you wanted. Her looking like slightly less dangerous jailbait doesn’t change that.”
Slumping against the old wooden door, Sophie rubbed a pale hand across her eyes.
“Then what now?” She sounded defeated.
Claire shook her head. “I’m a witch, not a psychic. It’s anyone’s guess.”
“Okay, chalice of wind, got it.” I held the smooth wooden cup in my hand, rubbing my thumb on the fine grain. “Circle of ashes, check.” I gestured at the burned circle on the ground, where we’d done the rite a week ago.
“Yes.” Daedalus leaned on his walking stick and looked around. There were only the two of us in the middle of these woods. It was barely midafternoon, but already the autumn light made deep, slanting shadows. Things felt quiet here, hushed, as if birds and animals were giving this place wide berth.
He definitely seemed weaker to me today, and so had Petra this morning. Had it happened to all of them? There was no way to tell with Luc, with his face being so messed up. What about Richard? I frowned, thinking back. I’d seen him just two days ago. Something about him had felt different. Had he been weaker? No. But something was different.
“Anytime you’re ready, Clio,” said Daedalus, and I snapped my attention back to him.
“Um, where’s the feather of stone?” That was how the rhyme had gone, the spell. A chalice of wind, a circle of ashes, a feather of stone, and a necklace of water.
“Richard has it. It’s a knife, carved of obsidian. In the shape of a feather.”
I nodded. “I saw it at the rite.”
“Yes. It’s been in our famillefor hundreds of years. I’m not sure how he ended up with it. It was always used in our important circles, our days of observance. That night, Petra used it to cut Cerise’s baby’s umbilical cord.”
“And the necklace of water? I don’t remember anything about that.”
“The old rhyme never specified what the necklace of water was, and that night Melita didn’t clarify it. I thought that it was something real, maybe something she had found or created and imbued with deep, strong magick. I remember her wearing a necklace—a string of moonstones. It disappeared when she did. Since then, I’ve often wondered if that was the necklace of water. You know what moonstones look like.”
I nodded.
“But Petra thought it meant something different,” Daedalus continued. “Perhaps tears or blood. It was foolish to try to re-create the rite without knowing for certain what that was—or without Melita, for that matter.”
He sounded resigned, sad.
“You worked really hard for a long time to create that rite,” I said.
“Yes. And who knows if I’ll ever have another chance?” He glanced over at me. “Perhaps with your help.”
An idea came to me then, and I put it out into the world without thinking it through. How many times in my life had I done that, sending an idea, an action, a thought out into the world, like a butterfly? And like a butterfly altering the world’s climate, what effect had I had on the world so far?
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “Or maybe you’ve been going about this all wrong.”
Daedalus’s eyes flashed, and he looked offended in the way that only an old-fashioned, proper gentleman can look offended. ‘‘Pardon?”he said coldly in French.
“I mean, you’ve been trying to re-create Melita’srite because it was the most amazing, most powerful thing you could think of. But now, two hundred and forty years later, don’t you think you and Jules and Petra and Ouida could write a new spell, from scratch? It wouldn’t be exactly the same, and it might not have the exact same effect. But I bet you guys could do something awesome. Come at it from a different angle.” I paced around the charred circle, where nothing would ever grow again. “If Melita’s rite set up the form one way, that isn’t the only way to do it, is it? Like, a spell to make your vegetables grow better.” I applied what I knew, having helped Nan a million times. “You can achieve the same results in lots of different ways. You can strengthen the life force of your tomato plant. Or do a spell to increase its attraction to bees so more bees come and pollinate the flowers. Or do a spell to ward off bad insects. The effect is the same, but there are lots of ways to get there.”
Daedalus was quiet, watching me, and I tried not to sound like an idiot. “You know the form of Melita’s rite and the elements she used. Maybe there’s still something missing, something you don’t know about, which is why the rite didn’t work, or at least didn’t work the way you thought it would. But what if you and maybe some others put your strengths together and wrote a new rite, using what you know, what you’ve studied for two centuries?”
“I’ve tried,” Daedalus said, his voice thoughtful.
“When? With who? The whole Treize?”
“No. It must have been back in the thirties. And with barely half of us.”
“So what do you want this rite to do, exactly?” I persisted. “Melita wanted power and immortality. But you already have power. You’ve got immortality. You have plenty of money. You can basically do anything you want. What do you need from this rite?”
Funny how I had never thought to ask that before.
“More power.”
I stared at him. “You’re already incredibly strong. What would you do with more power?”
“I would be able to work beautiful, incredible, powerful magick. I would be able to achieve whatever goal I wished. I would be independent, not needing others for anything.”
I digested this for a minute. “Is this like a megalomaniac kind of thing?”
Daedalus was startled into laughter. “Does it matter?”
I considered this carefully. “No,
not to me. Unless you were to harm or control me or anyone I loved.” Thais believed that he already had, that he’d killed our father. She was certain of it, but I wasn’t. Visions could always lie, if someone manipulated them the right way. But if he did anything in the future…
“What would happen then?” He seemed amused, indulgent.
I looked up at him, met his blue eyes that now seemed faded. “Then we would become enemies.” I expected him to laugh, to dismiss me with a wave of his hand.
Instead he looked at me and stroked his short gray goatee. “I see.”
We waited, watching each other, as if a challenge had been thrown down.
“So, write a completely different spell myself,” he said. “It’s interesting. I would have the whole Treize. And I have you, my dear. Your help, your power.”
Was this a test? What was I committing to? “Yes, you would.”
I looked at Kevin, sitting across from me at our small table in Botanika, and thought once again about how much I cared for him, how happy I was with him. Being with him felt clean and light, and I longed for it after having worked with Carmela. I still felt tainted by what she’d done to the orchid, and the knowledge of what was ahead of me weighed heavily on my conscience.
“I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” I said.
“Me too. They still don’t know what was wrong with me. I’m supposed to take it easy, no football or track or anything. But no school for another week! And it’s only Monday. That rocks.”
“I know,” I said, smiling. “And your car will be okay?”
Kevin made a face. “The front end needs to be replaced. But insurance will cover it.”
“Yeah—it wasn’t your fault.”
It was mine.
But I’d been learning limitations, how to keep magick focused so it didn’t affect others….
My latte was too hot. Nervously, I placed my fingers against the tall mug and mentally crafted a limitation around it. Then I cooled it, drawing the heat into my fingers. I watched Kevin carefully—he seemed okay. Yes!