A Feather of Stone #3 (15 page)

Was Thais seeing this? I blinked several times, trying to retreat to see her, but I couldn’t—my spell had unlocked this knowledge, and it had to spool out until it was finished.

I was sleeping in bed—no, it was Thais sleeping. Her sheet twisted thickly and coiled around her neck. She began choking, flailing, trying to pull it off. It must have been so terrifying. . . . Next, Thais and I were standing in front of our house, under the streetlight. A huge dark cloud engulfed us, and I grimaced, remembering the searing pain of the thousands of wasp stings that had almost killed us.

Next I got to relive that scuzzy guy pulling a knife on me in the alley in the Quarter. I felt the fear all over again, the cold pounding of my heart, my numb lips as I tried to summon a spell. Luc had run up right afterward.

Had
it been Luc all along?

The images got smaller, farther away, and I thought,
No,
because I hadn’t learned anything. Again I saw the same things happening—the streetcar, the wasps, the mugging—but now I saw another person at the edge of each scene, someone standing, watching, working the spells that called the danger to us. Who was it?
Reveal yourself!

The figure sharpened, took on features, clothing . . . and I felt like I had been clubbed on the head with a brick. It was
Richard
.
Richard
watching the streetcar and feeling disappointed that Thais hadn’t died.
Richard
summoning the wasps, watching them surround us,
Richard
working the spell to choke Thais with her sheet,
Richard
compelling that poor sap to attack me.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air. In my mind I saw Richard and me tumbling on his bed, me pushing his shirt off, holding him tightly, holding his head and kissing him, wanting him,
burning
for him. He had tried to kill me and Thais, again and again.

Oh God, I was going to be sick.

With a heaving gulp I fell backward, breaking the spell. I splashed down into the water. It closed over my head, but I forced my legs to straighten and righted myself, gagging and holding my stomach.

Thais grabbed my arm. “Are you okay?” She sounded near tears. “Did you see Richard?”

I was barely able to nod, trying to control the dry heaves that shook me.

“I can’t believe it,” Thais said. “I just can’t believe it!”

“It’s true,” I choked. And then I felt a huge, dark presence well up behind me. A shadow fell on Thais’s face, and she looked up. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened.

Turning, I saw we’d created a waterspout, a tornado made of river water, and it was spinning at us with a hissing howl, faster than I’d ever seen something move.

In one second the twenty-foot cyclone of water swallowed us, gulping us greedily into its unnatural strength. I tried to hold on to Thais, to scream, to summon a spell to save us—but our hands were wrenched apart. The last thing I saw was Thais’s pale, terrified face whirling away from me in the side of the cyclone.

The Bottom

Something was wrong.

Petra awoke in an instant, as she always did. Unconsciously she cast her senses throughout the house and yard, taking a quick reading of her world.

The twins weren’t here. She couldn’t detect their vibrations anywhere in the house or yard.

A glance at her clock showed six forty-five. On a Sunday, she could count on Clio sleeping in till ten. Leaping up, Petra began muttering reveal spells that would reveal whether someone had lured the twins away magickally. Two minutes later she knew that they had left of their own accord, not too long before, and that they had taken
her car
. And would be grounded until they were in their late twenties.

She grabbed the phone as she pulled on some baggy gardener’s pants. “Ouida? I need your help.”

 

“This way?” Melysa looked to the right.

Ouida nodded, her eyes vacant. She and Petra sat in the backseat, holding hands. Together their concentration was revealing the twins’ route, all the way to Abita Springs. Abita Springs! What were they up to? Petra’s mouth set in a grim line. She knew it wasn’t good. They weren’t over here at a pick-your-own pumpkin patch.

Melysa turned to the right and headed down a narrow, barely paved road.

“A river,” Petra murmured, seeing it in her mind. Then she and Ouida sat up straight at the same time.

“Oh goddess,” Ouida breathed.

 

She heard it before she saw it. As she, Ouida, and Melysa crashed through the woods toward the river, Petra heard a high wailing sound, like a train engine. The closer they got to the river, the more leaves and twigs whipped through the air. They tangled in Melysa’s hair and scratched Petra’s face.

“Is it a tornado?” Melysa called over the rising sound.

Then they saw it: a muddy waterspout spinning its way across the river toward the shore. Its sides were blotched with dark objects, pieces of driftwood, a snake, some fish. And the merest glimpse of a pale face, pale arms pinned within the wall of water.

Instantly the three witches flung their arms out and began shouting a dissipation spell. Each one used a version unique to herself, but the forms were the same, and they all had the same goal. Petra felt every muscle in her body quiver with magick as she called on a deeper power than she had used in decades.

“Water, lie down in your bed!” she commanded, holding out her wand. Electricity crackled around her, though she couldn’t see it. Behind her Ouida and Melysa were chanting and drawing sigils in the air. “Water, lie down in your bed!” Petra shouted, feeling as if her magick were going to sweep her up into its arms and fling her into the air.

Then it stopped. The waterspout fell all at once, smashing down into the river. Two human figures lay crumpled in shallow water, twenty yards away. Petra raced toward them, already calling on healing powers.

She reached Thais first and dragged her up onto land. The girl was unconscious but breathing. Ouida ran up and took over while Petra splashed into the river to get Clio. Clio’s eyes fluttered and she raised her head weakly, but she collapsed again and would have gone under if Petra hadn’t grabbed her arms. Melysa supported Clio’s other side, and together they dragged her onto the small sandy shore. In addition to the spells they were muttering, they pounded the girls firmly on their backs. At last the twins started coughing and gagging up water.

“They look like drowned rats,” Melysa muttered, wiping Thais’s hair away from her face.

Clio’s eyes opened blearily and she looked around, trying to orient herself.

Petra held Clio’s head in her lap, stroking her hair. “Clio, are you all right?”

Clio blinked several times, finally placing where she was and what had happened. “Thais?” she said hoarsely.

“Will be fine,” said Ouida, kneeling in the sand next to her. “
What
were you two
doing
?”

“I’m sorry, Nan,” Clio croaked, struggling to sit up. Petra helped her, supporting her back. Her anger had been tempered by the girls’ danger and her relief at their safety.

“I’m sorry. But we had to know who was trying to hurt us. I had to know who blew up my
car
.” Clio’s eyes were brighter and her voice stronger. Petra recognized Clio’s sense of outrage and knew that it wasn’t in her personality to take anything lying down.

“You almost got yourselves killed!” Petra said. “Did you cause this, or was this another attack?”

“Flip a coin,” Thais said weakly, also sitting up. Her face was still pale, and she had an ugly bruise already developing on one shoulder.

“I’m not sure,” said Clio, looking thoughtful. “I thought we had done it, putting our magick together. But I guess it’s possible. . . .” Suddenly her eyes flared and her face looked furious. “It was Richard, Nan!” She grabbed Petra’s arm and shook it. “It was Richard! Richard who’s been trying to kill us! We saw it!”

“What?”
Petra was shocked. Of all the people she’d suspected, none of them had been Richard.

Thais nodded, getting stiffly to her feet. She had sand in her hair and dripping off her clothes. “It’s true, if that spell worked. We saw him casting the spells, waiting to see what happened.
Richard.
” She sounded angry and sad, but Clio had sounded truly incensed, as if she were taking the news more personally.

Petra met Ouida’s eyes. Ouida looked as shocked as Petra felt.

“Richard,”
Ouida repeated, amazed.

Grimly, Petra got to her feet and helped Clio stand. “I’m surprised, but I can’t say it’s completely unthinkable. But this ends
now
. Melysa, can you drive the girls back home? And stay with them till I get back? Do not let them out of your sight, okay?”

Melysa nodded solemnly. “Yes. Ouida, are you coming with me or going with Petra?”

“I need to see Richard alone, I think,” Petra said, brushing sand off her wet canvas pants.

“I’m sure we’ll be okay,” Clio began. “We don’t need a babysitter. We’ll be fine—”

Petra gave her a piercing glare. “You will stay
home
, with Melysa, until I get back. You will not leave the house, not even to take the
garbage
out. You will not be taking anyone’s
car
without permission, you will not
leave
Melysa’s side, or I will slap you with a homing spell so strong you’ll live out the rest of your life in your
rooms
. Understand?”

A mulish look crossed Clio’s face as she weighed Petra’s words. She must have realized that Petra was dead serious, because she shrugged ungraciously and said, “Whatever.”

The five of them started to trudge back to their cars. Petra couldn’t believe she’d almost lost the girls today. In their headstrong
stupidity
. She walked closer to Clio and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “I don’t want you hurt.”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe it’s Richard. But I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

Clio looked up at her and gave a tiny smile. “Okay.”

“I just can’t imagine—” Petra thought out loud. “I wonder . . . does it have something to do with you two looking like Cerise?”

Next to her, Clio stopped in her tracks. “We look like Cerise?”

“Yes, of course. Didn’t you see her in your visions?”

“I told you that,” Thais said. “We look just like Cerise; we did see it in our vision.”

Clio shook her head slowly. “Not clearly enough to see her face. It was dark and rainy.”

“I saw her,” Thais said. “And we do look like her, except she was blond.”

Petra saw the two girls exchange a look.

“I’m sorry,” she told Clio, continuing on to her car. “I thought you knew that.” As always, her heart felt pained at the memory of the night she’d lost her last two remaining children.

“How much alike?” Clio asked.

“Exactly,” Petra said sadly, opening her car door. “You two look exactly like Cerise, but with black hair. But other than that, spitting image.”

Ouida nodded, looking sympathetic. “She was a beautiful girl, as you two are.”

Petra watched her girls get bundled into Melysa’s car. Melysa had thought to bring large beach towels, and now she made sure the twins were wrapped up warmly. Petra followed Melysa’s car all the way back to New Orleans, until Melysa took the Carrollton exit off the highway, and Petra continued on to the French Quarter.

When They Had Met

Each day was a blessing. Each day when he opened his eyes, whether it was sunny, rainy, clammy, or freezing, he was glad to be alive. It hadn’t always been that way.

Jules got up out of his single bed and stretched. It was raining lightly—he heard it pattering against the roof. The floor beneath his feet was cool—could autumn really be showing her face? He moved quietly, like a cat, into the bathroom, glancing into the front room as he did. Claire was asleep on the couch, in her clothes. He’d heard her come in early this morning, heard Luc put her to bed. She hadn’t changed her ways. She never would.

It was strange, really, how little any of them had changed over such a long period of time. Not only had they been frozen in age, but in their personalities too. You’d think that over almost two hundred and fifty years, at least some of them would have undergone huge changes, but none of them ever really had. Certainly not him.

Back in the kitchen he put the kettle on to make coffee. Claire would want some when she woke up. The small window over his kitchen sink had an uninspiring view of the brick fence next door, covered with fig ivy. In the front room, Claire stirred, shifting position, curling up almost like a child on the narrow futon couch. She’d teased him about his meager surroundings. Told him he still thought like a slave, after centuries of freedom. He admitted it was true. Slavery was not something one ever really got over.

In the kettle, the water made a rough purring sound. It was about to boil. He got out the sugar cubes, knowing Claire usually took three.

In some ways, it seemed just a short while ago that he had met her.

He’d run away from the tobacco farmer who owned him. He’d been beaten badly, and his hands had been manacled, but he’d escaped. He’d wandered for days, moving as he could, though in the end it was more like crawling. He reached a swamp and was only five feet into it when he fell, tripping on a hidden root, splashing down, hitting his head on another root. The world swirled, and he smiled, because now he was dying. They hadn’t found him, and now they would find only a corpse. He almost laughed, thinking how furious they would be. The top of his head, his face, was barely out of the water. It was warm and pleasant. Surely it wouldn’t take long now.

But . . . being dead couldn’t hurt this much, could it? He was in so much pain it shocked him. The bumping, the jolting . . . He forced himself to open his eyes.
Please let me be dead. Please, please let me see nothing, see the white men’s angels, see devils, see anything but—