Witch & Curse (21 page)

“Thank you!” Nicole gushed. “I won't let you down.”

Holly was astonished.

Footsteps sounded behind her; it was her aunt. She said, “Is Nicki in there?” At Holly's nod, she leaned into the room and gave a jaunty wave. “Hi.”

“Mom! I got the part!” Nicole cried. She raced across the floor and flung herself into her mother's arms. “I'm Juliet!”

“And you're surprised?” Aunt Marie-Claire teased her, hugging her tightly. “My drama queen?”

“Oh,
you
.” Nicole socked her mother playfully.

“Congratulations,” Holly said, sounding a little stiff to herself.

“I wonder what my costume will look like?” Nicole burbled. “What do you think, Holly?”

Holly was still back at the hocus-pocus moment. “Something pretty,” she replied.

Nicole twirled in a little circle. “But of course!”

Two weeks later, casting notices were posted in front of the classroom where Drama Club met every other Wednesday afternoon. Clusters of students jostled to read the posting. Various groans mixed with triumphant cheers greeted Nicole's, Amanda's, Tommy's, and Holly's arrival.

“I'm so happy!” Nicole clapped her hands together and did a victory dance inspiring more than a few wolf whistles from some passing jocks.

“The surprise! The joy!” Tommy joked.

“Congratulations, Nicole,” Maria Gutierrez said, stopping to shake Nicole's hand. “You'll do great.” She looked very, very disappointed.

Nicole flashed a smile at her, did the hug thing, the air-kiss thing.

“I know,” she said, then laughed to show she was just kidding.

The four left school, heading for Tommy's father's Corolla. It was in the west parking lot, which was the place reserved for seniors.

“Let's go to The Half Caff,” Nicole trilled. “I need to gloat!”

Holly looked over her shoulder at Maria Gutierrez, who was watching them go. Standing all alone, dejected.

My cousin cheated
, Holly thought.
Even if that . . . that magic spell or whatever
—she could barely bring herself to think the words—
didn't work, she pretty much talked Ms. Zeidel into giving her the part. Not because she necessarily deserved it. Just because she wanted it
.

That wasn't fair. And it wasn't nice
.

And if that's what . . . whatever she and my aunt think they're doing . . . then they should stop it
.

Was she sleepwalking?

Holly was drifting down the hall of the house in Seattle; the floor was as warm and silky-soft as her kitten's fur, even though she knew it was really planked oak with a woolen floor runner down the center. And on the walls were containers made of the faces of beautiful young girls; their hair was trailing flowers and vines, swirling and bobbing as if they were water lilies. Above, more lilies hung down, swaying gently; centers of light glowed in each one.

They're the hall lights
, Holly thought, and she nodded to herself.
Of course. The hall lights have always looked like that
.

She glided along, only slowly becoming aware that she was being led. The corridor was incredibly long, but if she concentrated very hard, she could make out the blue glowing figure who was walking far ahead of her, pausing now and then to give Holly a chance to keep up.

Yes, I'm coming
, she told the figure. Then she realized the figure was on fire. It was walking sedately along, the blue flames rising to a point above its head like a torch. Smoke undulated back through the hall, hitting Holly's nostrils.
That's why it smells like smoke around here
.

The figure raised one of its burning arms and gestured at Holly, moving very slowly. Then it pointed to Holly's right.

As if she were made of wax, Holly swiveled her head to the right. The wall had melted away, and in its place a broad expanse of stonework filled her field of vision. The stones were not completely square, nor of precisely the same size:
handmade
, she realized.
Not from a machine
.

The smoke thickened, filling her lungs and making her choke and cough. She felt the heat; it was frighteningly intense. Lifting her feet from the lily-pod floor,
she heard the crackling of the flames. The flowers beneath the soles of her leather shoes were disintegrating in the heat; they weren't lilies at all, but piles of straw. They were exploding into flame like bombs, and the sparks were catching Holly's woolen shift on fire.

Help!
she shouted to the figure.

But the hallway had disappeared entirely. Panicking, she whirled in a circle and batted at her shift. Blisters rose on her hands as she put herself out. Her legs were seared.

She knew where she was now—in Jean's room, in Castle Deveraux—and she was searching everywhere for him. She was frantic; he should have been on his fur-covered bed, passed out as if from reveling. She had put enough fernroot in his nighttime drink to make him sleep for two nights; now she had the magic powder in her hand, ready to revive him.

Through the smoke and the flame, she screamed his name, passing Deveraux guards smothering in boiling oil and pillioned with poisoned arrows, courtesy of her own kinsmen. Through the brilliantly lit night and into the stables she flew, ignoring the frenzied shrieks of the horses and their grooms as she magically unlocked doors and didn't think to leave them unbolted for those behind her.

She ran down the halls into the kitchens, where the massive fireplaces, large enough to roast a bullock each, blazed out of control, dragon's tongues gouting forth from each of the cavernous stone maws. Of the cooks and their helpers she saw no sign, but a metallic tang was mixed with the smoke, and she saw a number of cookpots melted inside the fireplaces.

Quitting the kitchens, she dodged a figure all in flames, barreling down the passageway. She sobbed with frustration as the firestorm yielded up shrieks of agony from every quarter of the keep. Within and beyond these burning walls, her kinsmen were putting Castle Deveraux to the torch. With vicious abandon they were massacring the men of the Deveraux House. That had been agreed upon, and she had helped in every way that she could. No one knew of her private bargain with the Goddess, which was to spare her husband and allow them both to escape.

She clenched her fists as she burst into the bailey. The flames illuminated the scene as brightly as any summer day. A flock of geese, all burning, squonked and screamed as they died. Lambkins and their ewes had fallen on their sides, their wool smoking. None of this had been agreed to.

Then she saw her own kinsman, her Uncle Robert, rise up off Petite-Marie, daughter of a noble
house in Paris, who had been sent to Castle Deveraux to learn the ways of a great lady. The poor child lay still as death, her skirts tattered, her legs uncovered. As she lay weeping, Isabeau's uncle pulled his sword from its sheath and held it with both arms above his head, preparing to drive it into the heart of the inert form.

“Non!”
Isabeau screamed as loudly as she could. Robert glanced up at her, then gave his head a savage shake and slammed his sword into Petite-Marie's heart.

Blood gushed into the air; Isabeau ran to him and wildly pummeled him on the shoulders and chest, kicking at him, ignoring the spray of blood.

“This was not part of the bargain!” she shrieked at him. “Only the men! My mother said only the men!”

“You
slut!
” bellowed a voice behind the two Cahors.

It was Jean, alive; his face was white as the dead and tinged with gray, but he was on his feet and unhurt. With a cry of relief, Isabeau ran to him, her arms outstretched.

He cuffed her so hard, her head was thrown back; she toppled into the dirt. Her head hit first, and she was stunned into blindness for an instant. When she could see again, her husband stood over her, one leg on either side of her. Behind him, the walls of Castle Deveraux were a fiery backdrop to his rage.

“I have an escape route mapped out!” she said, looking up at him as she wiped her blood from the corner of her mouth. Her teeth were loose. “Friends, willing to hie us out of France! We'll create a new Coven, my love, based on light, not this terrible gray our families share—”

“Murderess!” he raged at her. “Traitor!”

He hit her again, so that what happened next was all a blur, a terrible nightmare that pierced her to her soul. As she tried to speak again, her attention was diverted to the movement on the crenellated roof towering above his head.

It was Laurent, his father, dressed in full warlock regalia. Beside him stood others of the inner coven, in their robes, their faces hooded, and they were all gesturing as one, arms outstretched, then raised higher . . . higher . . .

. . . and the Black Fire of the Deveraux erupted into being.

The Black Fire gleamed and roiled, shadow upon shadow of powdered heat, flashing and dancing like a desperate Nubian harem girl seeking the approval of a caliph, or else death would come to her . . . like a dragon stomping on the ashes of overheated bones. Like the disintegrating mass of a damned soul as demons capered through it.

The Black Fire, at last; what her House had schemed for, and the Deveraux had withheld. The Black Fire, which was said to consume every part of whatever lay in its path, so that the essence, too, was devoured, and something new, something evil allowed to grow in its stead.

The prize.

“To the end, a lying, murderous bitch,” Jean flung at her. He pulled his sword and held it above his head, just as her uncle had done before putting Petite-Marie to death.

She caught a last breath and remembered the curse, that she would be doomed to walk the earth to pay for her crime against her husband and lord.

“There is a boat on the river,” she murmured. “Run to it, Jean. My people are there. They have been well-paid.”

Jean saw Isabeau's lips moving. He heard nothing. Perhaps the shout inside his head demanding that he spare her drowned out her words. Perhaps the fires and the screams around them were too loud.

He weakened, and he damned her and her mother for bewitching him.

We were too proud
, he thought.
We imagined we could outwit the Cahors. I had charmed her and wooed her in her
dreams, but when she came to me, and we were bound . . . I love no one else as I love her
.

I still love her more than my kinsmen, or my House, or . . . or my own very life. If only they would have permitted her to carry my child, we could have gone on, we could have made a new alliance between our Houses
. . . .

We were always simple pawns, placed side by side to force the game. The Cahors moved first, and boldly, and they have checkmated us
.

“Isabeau,” he groaned wretchedly. “I curse you. I shall never forgive you.”

Then he steeled himself to kill her. Drawing a deep breath in unison with her own, he raised his sword above her head.

She screamed—

—and the wall behind him collapsed. Jean halfturned, and saw the cataclysmic deluge of stone and Black Fire. Bodies tumbled toward him—his father, ablaze with ebony flames, and his inner circle, all flailing and shouting magical charms to extinguish the hellish destruction. Crushing animals, soldiers, a Cahors war wagon as it barreled into the yard; smashing into the Earth like the fists of giants, renting the ground into fissures. Smoke and heat and blaze—

In the last moments left to him, moments he could have taken to escape, Jean shouted a warning to
Isabeau. She lay unmoving, her arms held wide open. To him.

He flung himself on top of her in a protective gesture. He knew it was futile.

As the Black Fire washed over them, he murmured to her, “I love you as much as I hate you. I will hunt you, Isabeau of Cahors. And I—”

From behind her, someone tapped Holly on the shoulder. She jumped, startled, and turned her head.

The hall was gone again. She was still Holly, but she was standing somewhere else, a place redolent of smoke and heat.

Moonlight beamed down on her, and she raised her head and looked up at it.

A voice inside her head said,
Mead Moon. The Massacre of Deveraux Castle took place on Mead Moon
.

You have that long, before all is lost
.

TEN

HARE MOON

We seize for wives those we choose
Within their wombs our seed we lose
And after they have sons us borne
From limb to limb we'll have them torn

Welcome Goddess fill our lives
With your blinding, healing light
Our wombs are ripe as grapes from vines
Bring forth in us daughters divine

“Come on,” Amanda said as they tried on costumes in Amanda's room. “Don't waffle on me, Hol. You said you'd go.”

Rather than answer, Holly frowned at her reflection in the mirror. Relax? With everything that was going on? Sometimes she thought that she'd never be able to relax again. There was too much fear in her life now, too many nightmares and shadows.