Authors: Heather Hamilton-Senter
Tilting my head, I laughed lightly, a sound that paired nicely with this particular smile. “And I’m really grateful you did! I love it here already. I can’t wait for classes to start.” I began to wind a strand of hair around my finger—three times one way, three times the other—but stopped when I realized the headmistress was watching me.
She smiled back, but her eyes were narrowed. “Was there trouble then? Something that wouldn’t show up on your permanent record? You were sick for a long time—mononucleosis, if I remember correctly.”
I untangled my fingers from my hair and folded my hands in my lap. “I guess I became a little out of sync with everyone when I missed so much school.” I remembered what Ava had said about the weather. “My parents also thought a warmer climate might be better for my health, Headmistress.”
The woman stared at me for a moment before nodding. “I’m sure it will. Well, Lacey, your grades are excellent and I have no doubt you’ll fit in fine here. And you can call me Ms. Dalton or Dean Dalton. Miss Benoit disagrees, but Headmistress is a bit too Dickensian for my taste.” From her tone, I knew I was dismissed.
“Thank you, Ms. Dalton,” I said as I stood and walked to the door.
“Lacey.”
I turned. “Yes, Ms. Dalton?”
She looked at me intently. “I lost someone too, long ago, back when I lived in the North. My daughter died—was murdered—and I was bitter for a long time. I did a lot of things out of grief that I regret now, but eventually it got easier to endure. Because of what happened, I’ve made it my mission to protect and guide other young women. It may not feel like it right now, but the darkness of loss can sometimes lead us to a greater light.” As if on cue, a ray of sunlight streamed through the window and I caught the hint of something bright and reflective on her skin—a silver flourish just above her collar bone that might be mistaken for a faint scar.
When I didn’t respond, she sighed. “The guidance counselor at your old school added a note about your brother’s death, and about the changes to your behavior over the past few months. He believed it was a delayed reaction to the tragedy your family suffered, but I know the signs of a suffering and addiction of another kind—particularly wherever the Crone is present.”
Ms. Dalton shifted and it was unmistakable now; a silver tattoo marked her skin. I didn’t recognize the pattern, but I knew what it meant.
I’d lost my ability to trust along with my innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She sighed again and nodded. “I understand. No one here will force you to reveal yourself, Lacey. This is a safe place—a place where you can put the past behind you.”
I chose an innocent and uncomprehending smile. “Thanks, but like you said, it’s all in my file. I’m fine now. I appreciate your concern though.” I walked out the door, certain the pounding of my heart matched me step for step like a drum.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed, but I didn’t run. I didn’t count the diamonds in the pattern on the carpet or straighten the lopsided Christmas decorations draped across the mantle of the fireplace in the foyer. I walked out of Stradford Hall and stepped on every crack in the path leading to the residence, even though each crunch of my heel against the concrete sent a spike of ice up my spine.
When I made it to the safety of my room, I was grateful to find that Ava had finished her nap and gone out. As I lay down on the bed, I counted to three over and over until the old compulsions faded and I could think clearly.
The silver mark on Ms. Dalton’s skin was almost invisible, but maybe that didn’t necessarily mean the power behind it was faded too. The Crone had taught me that the price of witchcraft was to be marked by it, but I never guessed there might be different symbols than the twisted black ones that once ran along my arms and across my shoulders.
Getting up, I went to the closet and pulled out the battered leather bag tucked in the corner. I shouldn’t be so surprised that a school recommended by an online coven would turn out to be run by a witch, but had the knowledge of what the Crone and I had done—or tried to do—already traveled this far, this fast?
Taking the golden harp out of the bag, I cradled it in my arms. The harp of Binnorie had been given to me by my greatest enemy and was the second of my most precious possessions. The harp’s power was to find what was hidden, including hidden truths. At least, that was what I’d been told. The harp had rejected its previous guardian. The voice of Binnorie—the drowned girl whose power was trapped in the instrument—sang my name once and that was enough for me. We now belonged to one another.
I placed my fingers lightly on the strings. I’d taken piano lessons for years and could probably have managed to shape a tune, but I didn’t dare. The harp would sing when it was ready and not before.
“Is the headmistress a friend or foe?” I asked.
“Are you?” I thought I heard it respond, but the sound was so faint that I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just my imagination.
I waited, but there was no other response. Disappointed, I put the harp away and instead retrieved my greatest treasure. Reverently laying the old scrapbook carefully on the bed, I sat down beside it and turned to the first page of photographs.
A little boy stared back at me. He had dark blond hair the same color as mine, blue eyes just like mine, even a snub nose exactly the same. He was wearing an orange lifejacket and pointing at the water, his hair too long because none of us could bear to get it cut in case he lost his babyhood too soon with it. The boy in the picture had just turned six and was on holiday with his family at the beach; the sand pale beige and the sky azure.
Tears burned behind my eyes. Tracing my finger down the image of the boy’s face, I imagined I could feel the smoothness of his cheek. I was twelve to his six, old enough to be a protector, young enough to be a playmate.
Closing the book, I held it to my chest. My brother Stephen would never play on another beach after that day. The chaos called cancer would rise up and swallow him before he could even reach Christmas. After that, I would begin to perform actions in threes and scrub my hands until the cuticles of my fingers were always cracked and red.
“What would you think about what I’ve done?” I whispered.
I put the scrapbook back in the closet and closed the door. Frozen forever at six, Stephen would never know I was anything but the big sister who loved him.
CHAPTER TWO
Ava was gone for hours. I was still full from the dinner my anxious parents had pressed on me the night before—and the Christmas treats they’d filled my suitcase with—so I spent the rest of the day unpacking, setting up my laptop, and arranging enough personal items around the room to make it feel a bit more like home. I even did some laundry in the facilities down the hall. The only sour note was that I couldn’t find an iron and had to content myself with pressing my shirts with my palms until they were as smooth as I could make them.
When Ava finally returned, I was curled up in the chair with a book. Plotting world domination with an ancient witch and her master hadn’t left much time for reading.
“Hey, miss me?” She tossed her bag across the floor and didn’t seem to mind when it missed the bed and spilled out gym shoes and what looked like a wet bathing suit onto the floor. “You should have come over to the gym. It’s the building between us and Stradford. The facilities are pretty good. I thought security would have locked up the pool, but it was open— nice to have it all to myself. Whatcha reading?”
I passed her my book, but she took one look at the cover and gave it back. “
Love’s Pure Heart
—it sounds churchy. If I have to read fiction, it’s got to at least have heaving breasts and throbbing you know whats. You get the picture.”
I laughed. “Vividly.”
Ava started stripping as if she were alone in the room. I could feel my cheeks go warm, but she was staring at me so directly that I couldn’t look away. “Seriously though, is that your thing? Are you, like, really religious or something?”
I started to nod and then stopped myself. “I used to be. Maybe I still am, but I’m not sure how welcome I’d be at church.” I paused. “I’m coming off a bit of a wild phase.”
Ava was now rummaging through her closet completely naked except for a lace thong, making me wonder if this was one of the reasons her roommates bolted. The girl didn’t have a spot of cellulite on her thighs and was so lean that the muscles and bones of her back looked drawn on her skin in shades of tan and gold.
I looked away, a little jealous. My flirtation with anorexia—not to mention exsanguination for the Crone’s blood enchantments—had been brought on by an obsessive pursuit of magic. Even now, I was still almost as skinny as Ava, but I’d always been happy with my shape even when it carried five or ten extra pounds of baby fat. What I envied was the strength of Ava’s legs and the flexibility of her long spine. Sometimes I felt so brittle, I thought I might break.
Rhi was like Ava.
The first time I really noticed Rhi was right after Stephen died. My mind had been on a loop, endlessly replaying my brother’s last breaths before he passed away in his own bed surrounded by toy dinosaurs. It wasn’t until I went into his room a few days later and lined them all up three by three, smallest to largest, that my mind could finally rest. But my rituals weren’t the only thing that helped to relieve the pain—Peter Larsen became the sun I orbited. I’d crushed on him for years, but after Stephen died, that feeling deepened to real love. We belonged to the same church and I believed I’d received a spiritual witness that Peter and I were meant to be together.
The only time I ever doubted that belief was when I saw Rhi, really saw her. It was at church. The youth class had just let out and all of us were milling around in the foyer, putting on coats, and waiting for our parents. I was hovering near Peter. I don’t remember what we talked about. I do remember we were laughing. He brushed my arm once with his hand. It seemed accidental, but I knew, the way a girl does, that it was on purpose.
Suddenly, his head jerked up as if he’d been pulled by a string and he turned towards the front doors. Snow swirled outside, but through the glass, I could see a girl with long legs and wild hair the color of hot chocolate and melted caramel. It waved around her in the wind, mingling with the black hair of the woman beside her. They stood at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the building as if they didn’t dare step on church property.
Peter ran out to them, throwing snow at the girl and chasing her down the parking lot. I was forgotten and despair swept through me.
It took most of high school for me to understand there was nothing romantic between them. It didn’t help. I could see it in his face when he looked at her. I could see it when he fell in love with someone else. Rhi was still everything to Peter.
“But they can’t, right?”
I looked up and discovered Ava was now fully clothed in black jeans, a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, and giant copper hoops in her ears. An eggplant-colored hobo bag was slung over one shoulder, and an acid green, slouchy coat hung off the other. Somehow, it all worked.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“They can’t keep you from going to church, no matter what you’ve done, right?”
“I suppose so,” I murmured once I recalled what we’d been talking about.
Ava sat on the edge of her bed and began tugging on low-heeled ankle boots. “Then it’s a question of how comfortable you’d feel there I guess.”
“I guess.”
“So there’s nothing stopping you from a little sin and depravity New Orleans style, is there.” It was a statement, not a question. The girl jumped up and flashed the wide smile that took her face from interesting to arresting in an instant.
“I guess not.”
Grabbing the book out of my hands, she tossed it across the room. “Then why aren’t you dressed yet, girl?”
There was something about the air in New Orleans—fragrant, spicy, slightly rotten—that was both repellent and intoxicating. It was the only explanation for why I was huddled with Ava against the side of the residence while we waited for the security guard to finish his rounds. Neither of us were eighteen yet and the instructions in my orientation packet had made it very clear that students were not to leave the premises at night without clearing it first with Miss Benoit and checking in with security. I’d wanted to do just that, but Ava had assured me that Benoit would never give permission, and she’d gone home for the night anyway.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I hissed. Breaking curfew could get me kicked out of school. I didn’t know if the same rules applied during the holiday break, but I didn’t want to find out.
I wasn’t insensible to the irony that I was more worried about getting kicked out of this school than I had been of releasing monsters at the Halloween dance at my old one. But that was when I belonged to the Crone and her mind was my mind, almost literally. I was her vessel and any spell I mastered made her stronger. She’d promised to give me some of that power when my service to her was finished, but had her head cut off before she could keep that promise.
“Don’t be such a sissy or I’m going to assume you’re lying about being such a bad girl at your old school.” Ava’s teeth showed white in the darkness.
I shrank back into the shadows as the headlights of a car filtered through the gaps in the trees and shrubs lining the fence. “How are we even going to get out? The gate must be locked by now.”
“How sad, oh ye of little faith—very inappropriate this time of year, by the way.” She jerked her head. “Follow me.”
As the guard disappeared around the opposite side of the building, Ava darted out, but instead of heading down the drive toward the front gate, she disappeared into the shrubbery.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
A strong hand with long, tapered fingers encircled my wrist and pulled me into the bushes.
“Careful!” I used my free hand to protect my face as Ava drew me into the small space between the plantings and the wrought iron fence.
Leaning in close, she put her hands on my shoulders. “This is a secret that has been passed down from senior class to senior class for fifty years. You must swear to never reveal it to outsiders or to anyone who’s not a senior.”
“Ava . . .”
“Swear it!” she insisted, completely serious.
“I swear.” As I repeated the words two more times in my mind, there was a brief sensation of heat on my arm. Pulling away, I waited for a black mark to emerge, but the warmth faded and there was nothing.
Ava pushed on a section of rusty fence and it bent outward, creating enough space to squeeze through. In one sinuous movement, she was out. Following, I regretted my decision to wear a full-skirted, slightly retro dress, a cropped leather jacket with a zipped pocket for my wallet, and high-heeled boots—I hadn’t anticipated an exit via shrubbery. Thankfully, I only snagged my jacket once and otherwise made it through unscathed. Out in the open, I hesitated, but Ava put her hand in the center of my back and propelled me down the street.
“No second thoughts. We’re on holiday!”
My parents and I had stayed in a suburban hotel off the expressway that catered to business travelers. When we arrived at the school in the heart of the Garden District, I couldn’t see any more of New Orleans than an impression of light and life at the end of the darkened streets. I was excited to get a better look now. Across from the school were southern-style homes of white paint, pink stucco, and black wrought iron. They were so different from the solid, sensible, brick homes I was used to. I nearly tripped when the smooth, modern concrete of the sidewalk transitioned abruptly to aged and broken brick arranged in a herringbone pattern.
Ava looked at the heels on my boots and grimaced. “We can go up a block to St. Charles and get the streetcar to Canal, but we’ll still have to walk a bit.”
I bit my tongue and counted to three to prevent myself from snapping that I’d been wearing high heels since I was nine and this wasn’t my first time off the farm. “I’ll be fine. Where are we going? Bourbon Street?” It was the only place I knew in the city—a knowledge based strictly on movies and TV shows.
“Hell no! Not unless you fancy wading through urine and vomit while pushing past strippers. I know a little place just off the French Quarter where we can get some dinner. Then we can see where the night takes us after that.”
Nodding, I felt giddy and reckless. “Let’s get going then.”
Despite the time of night, the streetcar ran regularly and we arrived at the stop just in time to hop on. The slatted wood seats made me wish for more of my lost padding to return, but the historic St. Charles Avenue streetcar was my first real exposure to the romance of New Orleans. Still, after a fifteen minute ride, I was glad to get off and stretch my legs as we walked the block up to Chartres St. and The Crescent Bar and Kitchen.
A waitress directed us to a table opposite the bar and beside a stone fireplace where a fire simmered. I settled into the vinyl bucket seat. Part late-night bar and part hipster eatery, The Crescent was a comfortable mix of cozy and trendy. Colorful chalk spelled out the specials on the blackboard above the bar and flat screen TVs hung on the walls. A sign advertised live music on the weekends. Even though it was late, the restaurant portion of the place was as busy as the bar.
“I’m surprised they’re still serving food this late.”
Ava tossed me a menu. “Sure. They serve until around four in the morning.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding.”
She grinned. “They’ll still card you though, in case you’re wondering.”
Annoyed with myself that I’d let her surprise me, I shrugged casually. “I don’t drink.”
Ava raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment.
I picked up the menu. “So what’s good?”
“Try some real New Orleans food. Get the red beans and rice or the gumbo.”
I decided on the gumbo and Ava ordered a meatloaf sandwich with fried oysters on the side. As we waited for the waitress to return with our food, Ava mumbled something about needing to rest her eyes and slumped down in the chair, apparently napping again. The girl was definitely a little odd, but I didn’t mind the silence.
I was happily people watching when a young man came into the restaurant. As he walked over to the bar, he passed by so close that the disturbed air was almost a touch against my arm and my skin tingled. I watched him from the corner of my eyes as he sat on a stool and ordered a drink, laughing at something the bartender said. When my breath caught in my throat, I must have made a sound because he turned to look and the light of the fire awoke bright sparks in his blond hair. Something about him made me think of Peter. His eyes met mine and I could almost imagine that Peter had come to find me, had forgiven me and finally recognized that I was his.
I took a drink of the ice water the waitress had left, but the knot of pain in my throat made it difficult to swallow. Peter was in Las Vegas with Rhi and the other Protectors who followed Taliesin the Bard. He wasn’t coming for me. He would never be coming for me.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’re going to cry.” Ava seemed to be like a cat—capable of dozing off for a minute and then emerging immediately awake and recharged.
I finally managed to swallow and forced myself to smile a perfect, careless smile. “I’m fine.”
But I still couldn’t take my eyes off the young man at the bar. It wasn’t until he slipped off his stool and walked towards us that I realized I was still smiling my fake smile directly at him. It had obviously looked like an invitation. I let my gaze wander away, but he wasn’t deterred.