Authors: Heather Hamilton-Senter
CHAPTER FOUR
With Ava’s help, I clambered over the wall and out onto the street. We ran as if demons were on our heels until we reached Basin Street where we were able to catch a cab. Clutching her bag to her chest, Ava trembled in the back seat beside me, but wouldn’t say a word. When the cab dropped us off on the road to the side of the school, she stumbled out while I threw some bills at the driver.
“Ava, wait!” I cried, but she was already disappearing through the opening in the fence. I scrambled after her and through the vegetation, leaves brushing against the sore spot underneath my chin. I pushed through in time to find Ava vomiting violently onto the grass.
As I waited for her to finish, I picked up her discarded bag and was surprised to discover how heavy it really was. I looked inside. Jumbled with loose change, a wallet, and an impressive supply of cosmetics was a ten pound hand weight.
“I always carry it around.” Ava was rubbing her mouth and still shaking, but she looked a little better. “Passive weight training,” she added as she took the bag back and hung it on her shoulder.
“Good thing,” I replied, but Ava wasn’t listening. She was striding towards Stradford Hall.
Guessing what she intended to do, I caught up and grabbed her by the arm. “No, Ava.”
“We need to tell security to call the police! We need to tell them what happened!”
“We can’t.”
She shook me off, but I moved to block her. “What are you doing?” she screamed.
I glanced around nervously, hoping the guard on duty hadn’t heard. “Listen, I know you’re freaked out. So am I, but we can’t tell the police. Believe me, I wish we could. ”
“But . . .”
I called on the glamour of my lorelei heritage and there was no feeling of warmth on my wrist to protest—my last spell was truly gone. Pushing an unexpected surge of sadness aside, I focused on the terrified girl in front of me. “What are we going to tell them? That a vampire lured us to the cemetery to kill us? That a man flicked his finger and turned the vampire to ash? They’ll think we’re crazy or that it’s some kind of prank.”
Ava’s expression became uncertain. “How could Ethan be a vampire? Vampires aren’t real.” Her voice shook.
Taking her arm, I guided her towards the residence. “They’re real, but usually they just feed and let you go. They must have some sort of glamour magic as well because the only reason I agreed to go with Ethan was because I thought he looked like . . . someone I used to know. He didn’t, not really. Maybe the bars are where he goes to look for prey at night. Maybe we were just unlucky enough to attract his attention. He must have discovered a long time ago that the cover of the cemetery allowed him the privacy to do more than just feed.” I thought of how Ethan had lifted me down in that courtly, old-fashioned way. “A very long time ago, I think.”
The natural magic of my genetics was calming Ava down. She even looked like she actually believed me.
“Are we safe here?”
One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. I counted off my steps until I was sure I could reply in a steady voice. “Yes, we’re safe from vampires here.” I had no idea if it was true. The Crone had little interest in anything outside of witchcraft and saw all the other beings that lurked in the shadows on this side of the Wall as vermin. Vampires were supposedly not able to enter a home without permission, but what about a public building like a school?
But I was more worried about the man called Bel whose touch burned, and a girl who knew my name.
Less wobbly now, Ava pulled away. “OK then. Let’s go home. I just want to get into my bed and pretend the whole thing was a bad dream.”
We went to the back of the residence where Ava produced a key that opened a metal door—another Westover Academy Senior Class secret. It was the door to a utility room that collected the garbage bags thrown down the chute on each floor. Up a small flight of stairs and through another door, and we were in the hall that led to our room.
Once inside, Ava began brushing her teeth and gargling as if removing the last traces of vomit could bring the world back into order again. I couldn’t judge. I was scrubbing my hands in my own sink under water almost as hot as Bel’s touch. An itch in the back of my mind urged me to make the water hotter and hotter until I lost myself in pain. Worse than that, I couldn’t stop thinking about the small surgical knife at the bottom of my makeup bag.
“Again,” the Crone demanded.
I tried not to whimper. The Crone didn’t like it when I complained. I’d promised to obey under oaths that made me shudder to think of them, and I knew she would punish me and those I loved if I failed her.
But that wasn’t the only reason I was whimpering. Every time the Crone commanded me to slice the knife across my skin and spill my blood into the cup, she made me stop at two cuts. The pressure to complete my ritual was almost unbearable, but she wouldn’t allow me release. The very nature of my compulsions made me the ideal candidate to master certain types of magic, but the Crone demanded that I be that master, not a slave.
I wondered if she knew that when I was alone, I completed the third cut, deeper and longer than the others.
Turning off the tap, I dried my red, throbbing hands. I hadn’t cut myself since the night the Crone died, but I hadn’t got rid of the knife yet either. Folding the hand towel neatly into a small square, I forced myself to turn around.
Ava was sitting on her bed staring at me, her face shiny and her hair wet and spiky. “Explain,” she demanded.
Sighing, I sat down on my bed facing her and began. “To understand, you need to know about a girl I grew up with. Her name was Rhiannon Lynne, but everyone who could see her called her Rhi. The thing was, not everyone
could
see her, not really . . .”
When I finished the story of how I’d ended up on the wrong side of a fight between King Arthur awakened, Merlin who was also the Lord of the Grey Lands of Avalon, and Taliesin the warrior-bard who had sworn to protect mankind, Ava seemed to pass out more than fall asleep. I followed almost immediately after, but by the next morning, the girl had bounced back to normal and had acquired an insatiable curiosity about all things magical.
I was awakened by a hand shaking my shoulder. “So this Rhiannon you hate so much, she’s Merlin’s and Guinevere’s daughter brought through Time? And she remade Excalibur, like,
the
Excalibur?”
“Rhi,” I corrected automatically as I sat up, pushing the hair out of my bleary eyes. “And yes. I mean, no, I don’t hate her exactly, but yes, that’s what she did. I didn’t find out everything firsthand, but the Crone connected me with witches all over the world using the Darknet. News travels fast in the magical world. What time is it?”
She ignored my question. “And this Rhi basically threw you out of your own town?” The girl’s voice was indignant.
I turned the alarm clock on the desk so I could see the time; it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. “She had her reasons. She only wanted me gone until she and Peter joined Taliesin in Nevada, but I decided I needed a more permanent change.”
“I can’t believe Peter would chase after that fairy slut Miko all the way to Las Vegas!”
I flopped back down onto the bed and suppressed a sigh. Ava seemed to have only two speeds: on and off. Now that she’d adjusted to the idea that magic existed, she’d transitioned into complete acceptance of everything I’d told her—and obviously I had to be the heroine of the story. I probably should have, but I couldn’t tell her I was actually one of the villains.
Maybe it was because I didn’t feel like one. It was true that Peter was blind to Miko’s real nature. It was also true that Rhi had her own agenda and couldn’t be trusted. The whispers all over the Darknet—even those surfacing onto the mainstream Internet—were that Rhi was a
leannan sidhe
. No one really knew what that was, but the consensus among witches was that it was something old and monstrous.
If there are no heroes, how can those on the opposite side truly be villains?
I escaped that question and the rest of Ava’s by promising to answer everything I could, but only after I’d showered and had breakfast. She agreed and only tapped her foot and sighed a few times as she waited for me to belt a sweater over my denim skirt.
The morning air was moist, but mild. Stradford Hall had disappeared into fog, but I could see a black town car parked in front.
“I wonder who’s here.”
Ava shrugged. “It takes a lot of fundraising to keep a place like this going, even with the tuition they charge us. There’s always a politician or local celebrity being shown around by the dean.”
As we passed through the foyer into the dining hall, I noticed a security guard going through some paperwork inside one of the offices, but otherwise the building seemed quiet.
The entrance to the kitchen was behind the currently empty serving stations. Ava was already pulling down cereal boxes from one of the upper cupboards.
“Are there any baking supplies?”
The girl looked at me as if I had two heads. “How would I know?”
I rummaged through the kitchen until I found a cast iron pan and all the ingredients for pancakes. Baking was something my mom had showed me how to do before I was tall enough to reach the counter. It didn’t take long to whip up a stack of pancakes. The fridge produced a bottle of syrup, but Ava refused to try anything that wasn’t pure Vermont maple and dropped a small slab of butter on top instead.
“So what should we do?” she asked between quick bites.
I shrugged. “Well, I didn’t expect the school to be so dead over the holidays. I even thought I would need to wear my uniform the whole time so I didn’t bring a lot of clothes, mostly skirts. I should probably pick up a couple of pairs of pants.”
Ava put down her fork and stared at me. “That’s not what I meant. I thought maybe we should go back to the cemetery.”
“Why?”
“If there were bodies in Marie Laveau’s tomb—recent ones—shouldn’t we do something? Let someone know? Somewhere in the city, people are waiting for their loved ones to come home, but they never will.” Her eyes were moist with tears.
Shame made my cheeks hot. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Maybe we could call the police and leave an anonymous message about the hole in the tomb, say that we saw something inside.”
“That’s a good idea.” The girl was energized again. Pulling out her smart phone from the back pocket of her jeans, she searched online for the police tips number and began dialing.
Claire Benoit appeared in the doorway to the dining hall. “Miss McInnis, could you come to the office please?” Her hair was coiled in a high bun and she wore extravagant, dangling earrings; she looked like she’d been headed somewhere much more exciting than the school. “Just leave the plates. I’ll get someone from the cleaning staff to take care of them.” As she walked away, she wasn’t smiling.
Ava held up the phone. “It’s done.”
“Good. I’ve got to go though. Miss Benoit wants me to come down to the office.”
“What did you do to piss her off? She didn’t look too happy. Not that it takes much with her.”
“I don’t know.” A thought struck me. “Rats! I forgot to pick up my schedule. She told me specifically to get it off her desk, but I completely forgot. Do you think that’s it?” The old Lacey would never have allowed such a lapse in attention to academic detail.
“Benoit always has a bug up her behind over something, so it’s possible. I better go with you for back up.”
“Is she that bad?”
Ava grimaced. “The rumor is that she used to be a model or something when she was younger, but something happened and she ended up stuck here as a glorified secretary. She’s always acting like everyone else is beneath her, even the dean.”
Claire Benoit was tapping away at her computer keyboard when we entered the reception area. Her eyes flicked up from the screen. “Go on in. They’re waiting for you. You might as well go too, Ava.” Scowling, she jerked her chin towards the office.
Ava and I shared a look as we stepped inside. I could feel there was trouble, but I didn’t expect who I found seated in front of Dean Dalton’s desk.
The red-haired man called Bel and the young girl with tattered blonde hair.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hello, Lacey, Ava.” Dean Dalton didn’t invite us to sit.
I could feel Ava tremble beside me as she stared at the red-haired man. I hadn’t explained anything to her about him because he was a mystery to me as well, but I’d told her that many beings of magic lived in this world like normal humans. We were actually lucky Bel showed up when he did. Without any power, my only defense against a vampire was my strong singing voice and childhood dance training—meaning my ability to scream loud and run. Still, it was probably a good thing she’d left her bag back in our room or she might have gone on another swinging spree. By the way Bel was surreptitiously rubbing his jaw, he seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“Does the Amazon really need to be here, Dalton?” Bel drawled, jerking his chin at Ava.
It was his young, blonde companion who answered. “She saw the vampire and what you did to it, Bel. Lacey has probably already filled her in on everything else, so there’s no point keeping her in the dark. Besides, she’s pretty good with a weapon.” The girl looked at me. “That’s probably going to come in handy.”
The dean crossed her arms. “I’ve been apprised of your adventure last night. Have you taken it upon yourself to inform Ava of all the details on our kind?” Her voice was cold.
Rebellion pulsed through me, but I forced myself to respond with the kind of smile that usually got me out of trouble. “I think Ava has a right to the truth about this world, but I’m sorry if I broke some sort of rule around here.”
Bel snorted. “Don’t try throwing your watered down lorelei charm around here, girl. The only one it works on is your Amazonian friend, and by the looks of it, she’s already wrapped around your finger.”
The blonde girl rolled her eyes. “What my rude friend means to say is that his name is Bel. If you were around way back in the B.C.s, you would have worshipped him as a sun god. If you were around in the Seventies, you probably would have known him as the runway model who blew away his career and about a million dollars’ worth of cocaine in the back room of Studio 54.”
Bel pouted. “It was only a few hundred thousand, and you never needed to go to a dingy back room at Studio 54 to do your business. Those were more civilized times.”
The girl rolled her eyes again. “Whatever. It’s like, ancient history.” She lifted a laptop off the dean’s desk and offered it to me. “I’m Chloe. I have a message for you.”
I glanced at Ms. Dalton, but she was staring at her hands folded on the desk in front of her. Chloe followed my gaze. “I’ve already given the White Lady her message, but maybe she should share it with you. It concerns you too.”
I took the laptop and the girl slouched back in her chair as if she’d been released from some great tension. “White Lady?” I asked.
The dean looked up. “I’m the White Lady— the leader of the New Orleans coven. All other covens in the Southern U.S. owe their allegiance to us.” She gestured to the two in front of her. “Bel and Chloe work for Morgause, the Seer of New York. You’ve heard of her?” I nodded. “Good. Then you know that her messages are not to be taken lightly. I can guess what message she bears for you. Hearing mine may help you better understand yours. Go ahead Chloe.”
The girl stared back. “You know I can’t.”
Gesturing helplessly, the dean sighed. “I’m sorry. I forgot. We’re all bound by the rules of our separate vocations.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Chloe is the Messenger—the only one of her generation that we know of. She’s the direct descendent of the being who once called himself Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Each of his descendents who are born with the same gift serves Morgause from the age of ten till adulthood. Chloe has an eidetic memory, and once given a message by someone with the power to command her, she can and must only give it to the designated recipient of that message, or die trying. Bel is her bodyguard.” The dean’s lips twitched. “Though what he did to fall from Morgause’s grace to get that assignment, I don’t know.”
“Trust me, it’s an honor.” The man’s tone was sour.
Ms. Dalton sat on the edge of the desk. “Chloe, if I give you a direct command to repeat the message to Lacey, now that you’ve discharged your duty, would that suffice? It risks turning possibility into fate if I voice my own death warrant.”
Chloe sat up straight again. “Maybe. Command me with power to ‘repeat’, not ‘say’, and I think it will release your message.”
The dean didn’t move, but I felt the flare of power as she murmured the words of a spell under her breath. “I am the White Lady,” she said out loud. “Messenger, you have discharged your duty to me. You will repeat the words of the message which now belongs to me to do with what I will.” I might have been imagining it, but I thought I saw the slightest shine of silver through the sleeve of her silk shirt.
Chloe’s pale eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That did it.” All business now, she turned to me. “So, here’s the White Lady’s message from Morgause. The Gates of Guinee stand between this world and the next, guarded by the Ghede. To open the seventh gate, Saint Expedite demands an offering of the bones of three witches. Li Grande Zombi will swallow them and open the way between worlds.” She smirked at me and a dimple formed in one cheek; she definitely wasn’t even thirteen yet. “That’s actually a pretty straightforward one as far as messages from Morgause go.”
Ava breathed in sharply. “Wait a minute, I get it! It’s Voodoo!”
The dean’s face was white. The message didn’t mean anything to me, but it clearly did to her. “According to Voodoo lore, the Ghede are powerful spirits who guard the way between life and death. The seven gates are thought to represent the seven days that a spirit remains close to the body and is in danger from an evil bokur or wizard. In Lousiana Voodoo, the Ghede are called the Barons. The statue of Saint Expedite near St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is believed to represent the most fearsome Ghede of all—Baron Samedi. And the seventh gate is believed to be hidden in the cemetery.”
“And zombies.” Ava’s voice shook. “I’m sure she said zombies.”
“No, Li Grande Zombi was Marie Laveau’s pet snake. It was thought to embody the snake god Dhamballa.”
I shook my head. “So someone’s going to try to open the gates by using the bones of witches? That’s crazy!”
“Is it? Perhaps. But the threat is real if Morgause sent the message. My death would create a power struggle on this continent that we can ill afford given the more recent turn of events.”
Bel swung his legs off the desk and straightened in his chair. “King Arthur’s return has set plots and plans in motion all over the world. War is coming, and when it’s over, there’ll be a whole new order in place. Everyone with even half a talent is going to try to carve out a little kingdom for himself out of the chaos.”
“Are they?” the dean murmured. “What we do know for a fact is that the bones of one powerful witch are already missing.”
“Marie Laveau,” I guessed.
“Yes. The original Xs marking her tomb were part of a spell that every ignorant tourist’s addition only strengthened. The marks were deliberately simple and crude to conceal their true purpose.”
Ava rubbed her arms. “Obviously someone figured it out.”
“Obviously. I have to admit I never anticipated someone simply erasing the marks with paint. But you have to understand that the Voodoo Queen’s followers were responsible for that magic—and that magic has nothing to do with my own. I was not Marie Laveau’s keeper, though perhaps I should have been. Our unknown assailant now has the first component of the spell. That leaves us on the list.” She was looking at me.
One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. It took a moment before I was calm enough to speak. “The vampire called it a creature. He said it was looking for me, but I don’t have any power. Not anymore.”
The dean gestured for Chloe to respond. “The Seer of New York had a premonition of the Crone’s death and sent me to her.”
“You were in my hometown? Doesn’t the Seer believe in telephones? Or email?”
“Morgause would never trust one of her messages to any medium that can be manipulated and altered. I have no choice except to deliver any message exactly as I receive it.” The girl looked uncomfortable. “She was angry that we didn’t stick around long enough to witness everything that happened there, but after the Crone gave us this laptop, we went home. My instructions from Morgause are to say to you ‘you are the Maiden’, and then tell you to open the laptop.”
A tingling sensation ran down my back. All eyes were on me, but I never minded a bit of theater. I knew the truth of what I was—a powerless, defeated, wannabe witch—but I’d go through the motions for now.
Placing the laptop back on the dean’s desk, I lifted the lid. The screen was blank except for a Celtic symbol, similar to the ones that once covered my arms. Three blades made a trillium shape with a circle cutting through the middle.
Chloe pointed to the tip of each blade. “Water, fire, air.” She traced the circle with her finger. “Bound by the all-encompassing spirit that commands them. The circle represents the body, or the blood, that houses the spirit and balances all the other elements.”
I backed away. “I don’t want anything more to do with blood magic.”
The girl traced her finger around the circle back the other way. “It’s not just blood. It’s body and spirit combined. It’s the power of the Earth as it contains all those elements. It’s everything that’s alive and powerful, balanced and contained. But that’s not the message.” She sat back down. “Press one of the keys.”
I obeyed and the screen saver disappeared, revealing a window open with a video embedded in it.
“Press play,” the girl urged.
When I pressed the arrow for play, the window filled with the Crone’s ageless, aristocratic features.
“Lacey McInnis, if you are watching this video then you know that I am dead. It is only just. Enhanced by my power this side of the Wall, I have lived longer than any being has a right to. You are my heir. Whether this brings you good or evil, I cannot say, and am surely now past caring. There is some money and a small house in upstate New York which are now yours and the details can be found on this computer. But most importantly, I am the last in a long line of my kind. I spent my years as the Maiden in Avalon. As the Mother, I raised heirs not of my own body. Viviane, Morgause, and Morgana sprang into being in their present incarnation fully formed, but with the minds of children. I spent my power bringing them into theirs. When they abandoned me, I became the Crone. I had thought that the daughter of Cernunnos would be mine, but she walks a darker, more dangerous path. So now, Lacey, I am left with you. Do not curse me for leaving you at the bottom of my choices, for you may yet have reason to curse me for choosing you at all. With my passing, you are the Maiden. From the moment you hear these words, this mantle is upon you and others will recognize it. This computer contains a partial account of all the spells I have achieved, but it is woefully incomplete and I can guess that I have not taught you anywhere near enough to protect yourself. The return of Arthur has set events in motion and there is no more time. The choice of what to do with what I have given you is yours. It is no longer my concern.”
The video ended. No one spoke as I closed the lid on the laptop. Even the constant tap, tap, tap of Claire’s keyboard had ceased.
Seeing the Crone again didn’t make me sad. The old Lacey had been taught in Sunday school to
love one another
. The new Lacey didn’t think old women who tortured you and then gypped you on all their promises deserved to be mourned.
I was winding my hair tightly around one finger and its tip was turning purple. I forced myself to let it go. “Whoever wants the bones of powerful witches doesn’t want mine.” I pushed up my sleeves to show my arms. “I have no power. I was just a receptacle for the Crone to use.”
The dean pushed up her own sleeves and held out her arms. The faint tracings of silver could have been dismissed as barely visible scars, but to me they looked like flowing vines and flowers. “Witches are mortal beings. We can’t touch magic without being marked by it. When we abstain or moderate our use of power, the outward manifestation fades, but what we have done can never be fully wiped away. The mark—the actual essence of power—goes deeper than that.”
Bel’s lips twitched. “What she’s trying to say is that it goes all the way to the bone.”
Horror filled me. If my very bones were marked by the Crone’s darkness, how could I ever escape her? How could I ever find my way back to being the old Lacey? “So I’m the third target.” I was perversely proud of how cool my voice was.
Ms. Dalton pulled her sleeves back down. “Maybe. While your
potential
as the Maiden is great, there’s someone currently much older and far more powerful who is also here in the city.
Bel became alert. “Who?”
The dean narrowed her eyes at him. “The current Voodoo Queen of New Orleans—Marie Laveau’s heir.”
“See? Voodoo,” Ava muttered under her breath. Louder, she asked, “Shouldn’t we warn this
Voodoo Queen
then?”
Dean Dalton tapped the desk. “Yes, but she won’t trust any message coming from me.” She looked meaningfully at Chloe. “But if it came from someone she would believe . . .”
Bel ran his fingers through his hair. “Bloody hell.”