Arise (32 page)

“Amelia?”

Gaby’s frightened voice sounded faraway, muffled by distance. Which made absolutely no sense, considering the fact that she stood only a few feet away from me.

“Amelia, what’s happening to you? You’re … fading,” she seemed to whisper.

“I’m what?”

I could hardly speak, hardly concentrate through the headache. I forced my neck into an arch and tried to lock eyes with Gaby. But before I could do so, black flooded my vision completely.

I blinked rapidly against the darkness, and, strangely, the effort worked.

My vision began to refocus—hazy at first and then clearer, until finally I could see just as well as I had before the headache.

But in that brief interim a few things had changed.

Before, the narrow halls and low ceilings of the Mayhews’ town house had surrounded me. Now I kneeled outside, staring up at a partially enclosed structure that looked an awful lot like the Toulouse Street Wharf.

Then there was the issue of my company. Gaby had disappeared, as had Ruth Mayhew. In their place, a small group of people faced me: Hayley, Drew, Jillian, Annabel … and Alex.

Grinning widely, he took one step forward. “Merry Christmas, Amelia. And welcome to the séance.”

Chapter

TWENTY-SEVEN

B
efore I even processed what he said, I’d bolted upward and retreated back across the small footbridge leading to Toulouse. Alex mirrored my movements, walking forward as I edged backward.

Behind him, the young Seers stood motionless. Except …

All four of them appeared to sway on their feet, as if they were trying to stay vertical during an earthquake. Keeping most of my attention on Alex, I tried to study them more closely from the corner of my eye.

Each of them—Hayley, Drew, Annabel, Jillian—looked dazed; bleary-eyed and unfocused. On the ground, just to the right of Drew, I could see a wine bottle tipped onto its side. Just one bottle, though, which bothered me. After all, the young Seers seemed way too drunk for only one bottle of wine shared among the four of them.

Alex caught me staring at them, and his smile widened. In a voice far calmer than I actually felt, I said, “You drugged them, too, didn’t you?”

He nodded slowly, still pacing closer to me. “That was the last part of our summoning ritual—the part they didn’t know about. Well,
one
of the parts they didn’t know about.”

A corner of my mouth twisted in confusion. “Why drug people who are part of your plan … whatever your plan is?”

“They’ve been helping me,” Alex explained in an amiable tone. “But none of them really knew why, or what for. Jillian spied on you in Wilburton, especially when you’d go visit the river. She also told the Quarter ghosts where to find you on your first night here, while I performed a few spells to sabotage your materializations. But
Jillian
thought I was helping you find some new friends so you’d leave her brother alone. When you didn’t join those ghosts immediately, I moved on to Annabel, who sent Joshua to the Conjure Café at my suggestion. But Annabel just wanted to help him help you. After that, Hayley negotiated with the Quarter ghosts for your capture, but she stupidly thought it was a staged exercise in her Seer training—just practice in speaking to ghosts, not an actual attempt to trap you. And Drew—well, he’s relatively useless. But I needed his strength for the summoning spell tonight.”

“That’s … what pulled me here tonight,” I said haltingly. “Isn’t it?”

He nodded, chuckling. “They think we were calling you back, for Joshua. Because he’s been
so sad
since you left.”

He said the words “so sad” in a singsong tone, mocking Joshua. Mocking me. Perhaps I should have responded with something biting, but I’d temporarily fallen mute.

A chill shuddered its way down my arms. Obviously, I’d suspected Annabel’s involvement. But
all
of them? Jillian guiding the Faders to Jackson Square, where Alex must have redirected me; Hayley inadvertently acting as the Faders’ intermediary; Annabel sending me to Marie for … what, I wasn’t sure yet.

If none of the young Seers meant to harm me, then what exactly was going on? When I demanded that Alex tell me as much, he chuckled again.

“Jillian followed you today, Amelia, to this very spot. Even though you learned how to hide yourself from us, Jillian’s learned to
listen
, too, just like the rest of them. And you know what she overheard? Your plans to open a place I also want to enter very, very badly.”

I frowned, shaking my head fiercely. “The … the netherworld? I don’t even know how to enter it, and I’ve been trying for months. Besides, I think you have to be
dead
to do that.”

Alex had been staring absently at the swaying, disoriented Seers. But when he heard my last statement, his head whipped back toward me. The scant moonlight fell across his face and made it look bleached and gaunt, like a skull.

“That’s a small price to pay,” he whispered, “for what I want.”

I couldn’t help but gasp. “You
want
to die?”

He merely flashed me a wide smile in response.

It was a ghastly, freakish expression, devoid of humor and warmth. Smiling like that, he really
did
resemble a skeleton.

A strangled noise wormed its way out of my lips. “You’re
insane
,” I hissed.

He let out a slithery sort of laugh. “I’m also a descendant of Delphine LaLaurie, and those two traits have gone hand in hand for over a century.”

“Who did you just say you were?”

Something about his ancestor’s name bothered me. Something familiar …

Alex wandered casually back to the other Seers, who still swayed drunkenly on their feet. As he walked, he pressed his hand on their shoulders, pushing them downward. One by one, they dropped messily into seated positions on the concrete, which I could see had been lined with Voodoo dust. Part of their summoning ritual, probably.

While I watched him, Alex began to speak blandly, as if he were recounting a dull piece of history.

“In the eighteen hundreds,” he said, “a wealthy Quarter woman named Delphine LaLaurie tortured and murdered many of her slaves. But before that happened, she had several daughters. I’m descended from one of them.”

“And?” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. The more calmly he spoke, the edgier I felt.

“
And
,” he emphasized, “there are certain things that she passed on to her heirs. Most historians don’t know this, but Delphine heard voices. Voices that told her terrible things and drove her mad. Doctors would label it schizophrenia today; but I know better, especially since I hear them myself. Have, ever since I was a child. That’s why it’s been so easy to teach these little Seers to hear them, too.”

“The voices of the dead,” I stated flatly. “Delphine heard them, and so do you.”

Alex snapped his fingers, grinning. “You’re a smart cookie, Amelia. Couple that with your special talents, and it’s no wonder they want you.”

“‘They’?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“The ones I want to serve. The ones who talk to me, sometimes, when the ghosts are quiet.”

“Demons?” I breathed. “They … speak to you? And you want to
serve
them?”

“Of course I do. They’re the only family I have.”

“But I thought you said—”

“I did,” he snapped, his smile gone. “I did have a family. And the
minute
I showed my genetic inheritance, they had me diagnosed as a schizophrenic and shipped off to a ‘home.’ Just like my grandfather, great-grandmother, and on and on for generations in one long line of heartwarming family betrayal.”

When he finished, he laughed almost giddily, as if he’d just told a joke.

If I didn’t previously grasp the danger of this situation, I certainly did now. Not only had Alex tricked and drugged the other Seers—not only did he want to work for the most evil things I’d ever met—but he was also certifiable. I had to keep him distracted while I tried to think of some way to help the drugged Seers.

“That must have pissed you off,” I murmured, moving a centimeter closer to him on the footbridge. “When your family betrayed you like that.”

His smile returned in the form of a smirk.

“That description doesn’t do it justice, Amelia. The only reason I stayed focused, and determined, was because of the encouragement I got from the voices. The voices were my only comfort—my only family—for years. They promised things would be better one day; they told me stories about what I was destined to do. Because of them I’m the first LaLaurie to trick the doctors into thinking I took my meds and got better. I even got the home to release me in time to go to college. At the voices’ command, I moved back to New Orleans and enrolled at Tulane. I used a fake name for a while, trying to get back to my roots, while I made a few sacrifices to the darkness. I even tried to kill
myself
for them, but they just weren’t ready for me yet. That changed, though, when I met Ms. Comeaux here.”

Alex paused to jerk Annabel’s head back roughly by her hair and then let it flop forward. Although she didn’t react, the movement looked like it hurt, and I winced for her.

“And what about Annabel is so special?” I asked.

“Her? Nothing.” He laughed. “Aside from possessing a gift that I thought could help me open the dark world without killing myself.”

I sneered. “What, your ‘
family
’ didn’t teach you the secret handshake to get inside?”

Alex shrugged, obviously not bothered by my tone. “Those I want to serve require sacrifice. Effort. That’s why I swallowed my pride and tried to break into the Seers’ coven here. But of course, every Seer freaked out the second I started hinting at what I wanted. So I had to try a different route. I introduced myself to the newest member—Ruth Mayhew—and worked her connections to a group of young, untrained Seers so that I could put my own coven together.”

“And you told them you were
helping
ghosts,” I said. “So that
they
would accidentally open the netherworld for you.”

Alex made a slight clicking noise with his tongue and winked at me. “You got it. Nothing like telling a group of inactive, malcontent Seers that their boring elders are the bad guys and that they can be the good guys. It worked like magic. Except for one small part: these useless idiots couldn’t open a barn door much less the netherworld.”

“So why torture them like this?” I gestured to the line of Seers at his feet. “Why keep them around at all?”

Alex smiled darkly and pointed a long, thin finger at me. He didn’t say anything, but I caught his meaning well enough.

“Me,” I concluded. “You wanted them to help you get me.”

“Exactly. When Jillian told Annabel about what you did the night you saved her, Annabel told me. Then I told the voices. I guess it goes without saying that they were very excited by that news. It seems as though you’d avoided them once before; it seems as though they want you even more, now.”

I felt a very real wave of nausea roll over me, but I fought it. I swallowed hard, shoving all of my internal shrieks of warning and fear to a back corner of my brain so that I could keep Alex talking.

But as I tried to come up with a distracting topic, my mind kept blanking. Like I was taking some kind of test for which I’d studied so hard that I’d started to forget the answers. Finally, I settled on something inane to ask him.

“So you … so you said you changed your name for a while. Alexander Etienne is, what? A real name? A fake one?”

“That’s the name I was born with—the name I’ve been using with all of you. But in college I starting going by my middle name, and the last name of my ancestors. In college, I went by—”

“Kade LaLaurie.”

The groaned name startled me, and I spun around to see whoever had spoken. To my surprise, I saw Gaby standing behind me. I had no idea how she’d found me, but I felt a huge surge of relief that she had.