Melita kept speaking, words Petra had never heard, and then, shimmering in the water, getting closer to the surface, she saw the white skin of the twins’ faces.
“Clio! Thais!” Dropping again, she lunged for the water and felt the silken swirl of soft black hair. The girls’ faces bobbed above the surface, but their eyes were shut, their faces still. “Help me!” Petra cried.
Together she, Ouida, Richard, Luc, and Jules pulled the twins’ bodies from the Source. As soon as Petra touched them, she knew: one was dead, one was alive.
“Clio!” Richard said, his face ashen. Roughly pushing Petra aside, he scooped up Clio’s dripping body and cradled her on his lap, wiping wet, black hair off her beautiful, tranquil face. He rocked slightly back and forth, smoothing her hair, her face, her skin under his fingers. His face was a mask of pain. “Clio, Clio, Clio,” he whispered.
Petra thought dimly, Richard?
A few feet away, Luc had turned Thais on her side and slammed his palm against her back again and again. Waiting through a lifetime of slow seconds, Petra thought she was imagining things when Thais coughed, water running out of her mouth.
“Thais, Thais,” Luc murmured, holding her, rubbing her back. Thais gagged and choked, coughing and then sucking in breath. She was alive. Petra had lost one and kept one.
“Actually, I need them both,” Melita said quietly. Furious, Richard tried to block her, but Melita dropped like a bird of prey and struck her fist hard against Clio’s chest. The few words she spit out sounded as if they had come straight from hell. Except that Petra knew none of them believed in hell.
Richard stared, and before Petra’s eyes Clio’s white face seemed to color again. Melita could give life as well as take it away.
I was sleeping, and the next thing I knew, I was coughing up water and gagging while someone pounded my back too hard.
Blinking groggily, I realized I was on wet leaves on the ground, and it was raining, and the only part of me that was warm was the hand on my back. I looked around. Petra sat a few feet away, her face tragic, almost skeletal. Luc hovered over me. It was his hand on my back. I’d thought I’d never see him again. Now, realizing I was still alive and he was here, I started crying but tried to sit up.
“Where’s Clio? Where’s my sister?” She’d died in front of me—I’d seen it, felt it.
“Shh, shh,” Luc said, smoothing my sodden hair.
“Where’s Clio?” I said, my voice a croak.
“Here.”
I turned to see Richard looking down at Clio, transfixed, and I thought, I was right. He loves her.
And she was dead.
Except she was blinking.
Blinking? I sat up.
My sister was alive.
Is there a white light, a tunnel, people who have passed before holding out their hands?
Maybe. I’m not going to spoil the surprise.
Richard was holding me, stroking my hair. Thais was alive. Petra was alive.
Every member of the Treize was there: Claire and Jules, holding hands. Sophie, weeping over Manon’s body. Ouida, kneeling next to Daedalus. Marcel, sitting next to Sophie. Axelle, who had arrived and was sitting on Daedalus’s other side, looking amazingly torn up over his broken condition.
And Luc, who had chosen Thais, not me.
Richard held me tensely, seeing me look at Thais and Luc. I looked back at him, into his dark eyes that showed every emotion I’d never thought he had: fear, hope, love—you name it, I saw it there in his tears.
“I’m glad to see you,” I whispered, and reached up to touch his face.
Beginning Again
Richard paused before he rang the doorbell at Petra’s house. Inside he felt Petra, Ouida, and Luc, and he grimaced. Well, might as well get it over with. He rang the doorbell.
This morning felt like a hundred years ago. He’d seen Clio dead, wearing her necklace of water, just like Cerise had 242 years ago. There was still a lingering pain over Cerise; there always would be. He was both sad and relieved to know that he hadn’t fathered her baby. The idea that she’d been with Daedalus even once disgusted him—he really hadn’t known Cerise, had he?
What he felt for Clio was a thousand times deeper, stronger. Scarier.
Ouida answered the door. Examining his face, she hugged him silently. He hugged her back, relaxing into her embrace for the first time.
“How’s Petra?”
“Surprisingly good, considering everything,” she said.
In the kitchen, the kettle was whistling. Luc and Petra sat there, and Ouida was right—Petra didn’t look nearly as bad as he’d feared.
“Richard.” Petra looked at him, and he saw acceptance in her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re all right. What a day. Poor Manon. And Melita—”
“Is gone again,” said Ouida.
“Girls okay?” Richard said.
“Thais is upstairs,” Luc said, sounding pompous and possessive.
“They’re fine, thanks to everyone,” said Petra, sipping a steaming cup of something herby and medicinal.
“How the hell could Melita kill Manon?” Richard asked bluntly.
Petra’s face twisted in pain. “I think—I just think Melita is still the strongest of us all. As strong as she made us, she kept the most power for herself.”
“Was she the one who was trying to kill the twins?” Richard’s face flushed. “I mean, after me,” he mumbled.
“If she was, they’d have been dead,” Ouida said. “No—actually, we still don’t know who it was. Maybe Daedalus? He’s not coherent enough to ask. We just don’t know.”
Richard stayed standing, casting a curt glance at Luc. “I want to see Clio.” He looked at Petra as if daring her to try to stop him.
“She’s upstairs,” Petra said. “I don’t know if she’s awake or not.”
Richard nodded, then turned and started up the stairs. He had no idea what he’d find. He braced himself for the cool, disdainful Clio to be firmly back in place, death experience notwithstanding. Well, he would just start over. He had time.
At the top of the stairs, one door was shut, and one was slightly open. Thais was behind the closed door, Richard sensed, and crossed the landing. He tapped gently on the open door, mostly as a formality, then pushed it open and immediately shut it behind him.
Clio was propped up in her bed, not reading or doing anything, just looking at the ceiling. She seemed startled to see him, especially here, in her bedroom, and he was surprised she hadn’t felt him come up the stairs.
He stopped a few feet from her bed, taking in her scrapes and bruises, her still-pale face. She was wearing some unsexy kind of flannel something with pictures of sushi all over it. He had no idea what to say so instead looked at her challengingly, hoping to start an argument at least, because it would be some kind of interaction.
Her slanted, leaf green eyes looked at him, and then… she held out her hand.
Taken aback, Richard didn’t move for a moment, then stepped forward and took it. Amazingly, she shifted on her narrow bed, making room for him. After a tiny hesitation, he sat down next to her, his heart pounding. She leaned against him, putting one arm over his chest, and his throat closed up.
He held her to him, stroking her hair, thinking about how he’d almost lost her forever.
“I guess it’s all over,” she said, her voice still raspy and weak.
He sighed and kissed her forehead. “It’s never over, baby.”
Clio seemed to accept this. She looked up at him with her beautiful, cat-shaped eyes, the rose-colored birthmark of a fleur-de-lis on her left cheek.
“Just hold me, okay?”
He nodded, and they snuggled closer together. It began to rain outside, the drops hitting the windowpanes. But in here they were warm and dry and safe. At least for now.
What was left of the Treize had gathered and built the magickal equivalent of Fort Knox around us in protection spells. I knew Petra was still worried that they didn’t know who’d
tried to hurt us, but with Melita gone and no chance of a rite happening, I felt safe enough to venture out of Petra’s house. My house. My family’s house.
It was a beautiful fall day, which everyone had told me was very rare for New Orleans. It was chilly and clear, and the air was almost crisp. I’d decided to take a walk up on the levee, by the river, which was only three blocks from our street. A shell road topped the levee all the way up to Baton Rouge, and people rode bikes and horses along here all the time.
Now I walked along, watching the endless river with its traffic of barges and steamboats.
Clio seemed happy with Richard, and the two of them suited each other better than I would have guessed. I was happy for her, having seen glimpses of the old, fun Clio peeking out in the last couple of days.
As for me, I was alive, and I had a family and a home. I was fine.
Sighing, I left the shell road and went down the levee a bit to sit on the warm, soft grass there and watch the water. I’d sat on the levee another time, a lifetime ago, where the river ran next to the Quarter. Now I turned my face to the sky, closing my eyes, enjoying the sun on my skin.
I sat like that for minutes, not thinking, just letting myself be, aware of all the ways I was connected to the world, all the things I felt now, life and magick and beauty.
“Thais.”
I jumped—I’d come to rely on being able to sense people around me. Hearing a voice at my back without sensing someone coming was really startling.
Especially considering who it was.
Luc sat down next to me, a Greek god once again, the sunlight glinting off his perfect, chiseled profile.
“You look better,” he said, appraising me.
“So do you,” I replied.
He laughed dryly and touched his cheek with one hand, as if to make sure he hadn’t uglified again. He was wearing worn jeans and a soft button-down shirt under a leather jacket, and he looked … beautiful.
“Thais,” he said, taking a breath. “When you and Clio realized that I’d betrayed you, I thought I’d lost you forever.”
My face stiffened, and I looked away. He was only inches from me, and I felt the heat of his knee reaching mine.
“Then, when I did this to myself at the rite, I was really sure that I’d lost you forever.” He gestured at his face, and I glanced up, startled. He nodded. “At the rite I asked for the chance to make you love me again. That face was what the spell produced. It was meant to knock the wind out of my sails and figure out who I was inside. To help me understand what was important, what I really cared about, about myself and my life.”
I didn’t know what to say.
He let out a deep breath. “Then, three days ago, when we hauled you and Clio out of the Source, and I saw you …” He looked away, plucking at the grass with nervous fingers. When he spoke again, it was barely a whisper. “Then I knew what losing you would really feel like.” His dark blue eyes met mine, and somehow I understood that he was different—that he wasn’t trying to win me, wasn’t asking anything of me.
“And I wanted to say—everything seems all right since you’re alive.” He cleared his throat and looked out at the river. “I don’t care how I look or where I live. I don’t care if you learn magick or not or stay with Petra and Clio. It doesn’t matter if you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter if you love someone else—whatever makes you happy. As long as you’re alive in this world, then everything is all right. And I want to be alive too. As long as you are. That’s the only thing of real value to me.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. “Melita said—I’m as dark she is. It’s in my line, inescapable. I stripped Daedalus of his powers. Only someone … awful could do something like that.” I looked down at my scuffed clogs, picked at a hole in my cords.
Luc didn’t say anything, and finally I looked up at him.
“Darkness is in everyone, Thais,” he said gently. He reached across and took one of my chilled hands in his. “In me, in you, in Petra and Ouida and everyone. And so is light. Darkness is a choice, a path. Every day we all have to make the choice to choose good, choose light. We make the choice against darkness, against evil, every day, a thousand times a day, our whole lives.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have choices,” I said, my words barely a whisper. This was my deepest fear, and it was devastating to say it out loud.
Luc leaned over and kissed my hair. I didn’t flinch away from him.
“I promise you, you do,” he said firmly. “Even Melita has choices. Everyone always does. I believe that from now on, you’ll make the best choices you can.” He laced his fingers with mine, and it felt so incredibly comforting, so incredibly perfect.
“Thais,” he said, sounding very unsure. “I would … be grateful… if you would choose … somehow …” He cleared his throat again. “To be my friend.”
I could hardly hear the last words. I looked down at our fingers, his long tan ones, my smaller, paler ones, and I knew that I wanted to hold his hand forever.
“Yes,” I said, and in that moment, the burden of my dark inheritance seemed to lighten a hundredfold. “Yes, Luc. I’ll be your … friend.”
Cate Tiernan, A Necklace of Water
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