Infatuate (42 page)

He just smiled. And with that, he grabbed the fork on my plate, speared a hunk of cake, took a bite, and then nabbed something from what was left on my plate.

“Congratulations. All hail, Queen Haven,” he said, grabbing the tiny plastic figure from my plate and holding it up. I took it in my hands as he smiled warmly, reassuringly, and wandered back to his room.

After all the time I had spent in that empty, eerie LaLaurie mansion during its renovation, it felt strange to see the place dressed up for a party on the morning of Mardi Gras. It was as if it had taken on an entirely different persona, evolved. I felt like I had grown up in these few months too, like I’d faced down immense evil, and though it had been the struggle of my life, I was now prepared to spit in its face. I had proved I had the emotional strength to fight off this horror. Now I just hoped I had the physical strength.

“I don’t like this idea,” Lance had told me when I shared my plan to meet Lucian. “But I get it.” Lance waited for me on the porch while I went inside. We were due to board the float soon so I didn’t have much time.

The crystal votive in the foyer had been replaced with a candelabra, but there was no mistaking the figure standing before it, gazing outside onto the world he would hopefully be joining in a few hours’ time.

Before I reached him, he turned around. He wore a mask, already prepared for the party that would begin later. Even with his face obscured I could tell from his eyes that it was him, not the Prince, but to be extra sure, before I said a word, I ordered myself:
Listen to your scars, your radar.
I closed my eyes and did a quick internal check: nothing. No flare-ups, no warning signals. This was Lucian, I was certain.

I was already in costume for the parade, dressed—in an outfit not of my own choosing—as what was intended to be a sexy devil. A table just inside the front door had been decorated with scores of Mardi Gras–colored masks. I picked one up and held it in front of my face, mirroring him. “That had better be Haven under there,” he said sweetly. “Otherwise I’m going to have to ask you to leave, whoever you are, because I’ve officially got this window reserved.” His gray eyes twinkled.

I smiled shyly. “Just me.”

“Hello, just you.” He lifted his mask.

“Do they know you’re here now?”

“No,” he said. “But I don’t think the recruitment will begin in earnest until the parade starts. I’ll be fast and then I’ll come back later, as midnight nears. By then you’ll have completed your battle.” He spoke in the clipped cadence of someone trying to silence his nerves.

“And I’ll have time on my hands,” I said lightly. He smiled, appreciative.

“Exactly. As long as I can go AWOL and avoid either being captured and taken back down against my will or . . .” His voice softened, slowing down. “Well, I think you know the other possibility . . .” I did. I nodded, trying not to let the fear show in my eyes. “Then my soul is free.”

“Then you’re free, got it.”

“No.” His eyes connected with mine for just a moment.

“What?”

“My
soul
is free.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Not exactly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t worry about it now. We just have to keep me alive and away from the rest of the Krewe until midnight and then I’ll be mortal, at least. But my powers will slowly fade as it gets closer to midnight, and when they see I’m not at the crypt collecting their trophies, they’ll come looking for me. I’ll need you. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

“You’ll just need some backup, no problem.”

“I’ll meet you back here after your battle.” He hung his head for a moment, looking at me with heavy eyes. “I’m afraid I still don’t know who you’re fighting, only that Clio will try to wear you out beforehand, so conserve your strength if you can.”

“Got it,” I said firmly. I needed Lucian to believe that I wasn’t worried. I didn’t know much, but I was aware that if he let even a tiny part of himself give up, this was never going to work.

Suddenly, a vacuum cleaner started up a few rooms over and voices and footsteps grew nearer. The party planners were still there, preparing. Lucian flicked his head toward the staircase. I followed him up to the second-floor landing. He seemed to be in search of somewhere private, quiet. Somewhere for the kind of heavy goodbyes you feel the need to give when you know the stakes are this high. A gold-threaded tapestry of a fleur-de-lis hung against one wall. He stopped before it.

“How am I supposed to thank you for risking your life for me? I don’t want to point this out, but you do know that they won’t hesitate to kill you if they find out you’re aiding me like this?”

“You can thank me just by, you know, living,” I said.

“Deal.” He smiled. The melancholy grandfather clock began its dirge. Just outside of the window downstairs, I could see Lance peeking in, keeping an eye on me. Lucian glanced down for a moment too. His hand on my arm, he spoke into my ear. “I understand how things are, of course. But if it’s all right I may still have to love you forever. Okay?”

I didn’t answer; I had no answer.

He pulled aside the tapestry and slipped behind it, disappearing instantly.

34. Prepare to Chase and Be Chased

By the time we boarded the float in costume, waiting in line to travel down Bourbon Street, where the crowds were swarming—mostly drunk, and, it seemed, happy to do just about anything for the chance to earn some sparkly beads from us—I had put on my game face and was ready. As ready as I’d ever be. Between the roar of the raucous paradegoers and the shrieking horns and thump of the zydeco music, I couldn’t hear myself think. I let it all wash over me, only too willing to let the thinking part of myself be overruled by the feeling part. If I had learned anything, it was that today would be a time for instincts and gut checks to prevail.

Clouds had rolled in, and with them the damp, thick air of an approaching storm. Thunder crackled in the distance. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. Hurricane season is way over,” I heard one of the girls on the costume committee declare as we all assembled, taking our places on our quartet of floats. She was right, but I had checked the weather reports while catching up on some e-mail that morning—since, of course, I had woken up long before the sun rose and had barely slept at all—and a storm was expected to hit sometime today.

A different kind of storm had been brewing in my inbox: I heard from three of my prospective colleges, Northwestern, U. Chicago, and Princeton, and I was in, in, and in. I couldn’t believe it, but most shocking of all was that it felt nothing like I had expected. I had dreamed of news like this my whole life, and now I wished I could be more excited. I just wished I knew for sure whether I’d be lucky enough to even live to choose one, let alone to enroll. Making it all the more bittersweet, when I went to Connor’s room to tell him, but mostly to say goodbye, I found the door unlocked and his things gone. He had left a note on his desk:

Good luck to you all. It’s truly been an honor to train you. I know you’ll all succeed and that I’ll see you again soon, so I’m not about to get sentimental here. Give ’em hell! Later, Connor.

I took it and posted it on the front door so it might be the last thing we saw when we left. Then I called Joan but got her voice mail. I remembered she had a long shift today and I was almost relieved. I e-mailed her instead of leaving a message and, because it made me feel better, I tacked this promise onto the end:
If I don’t catch you before the parade, I just want you to know I’m sorry about our talk the other day. I have so much to tell you and I want to tell you all of it. You may not believe it all, but I would love to share it with you. Thank you for always wanting to listen. I love you, Joan. Love, Haven.

If I made it through today, I would allow myself to let her in, tell her everything. Keeping it inside was killing me. This was the deal I made with myself.

Hello, handsome devils,” I said to my three fellow demons, Lance, Dante, and Max. We had staked out a spot behind a few tombstones toward the back of the float. The guys were in black pants and black T-shirts with swatches of red leather—or, rather, pleather—sewn in at the pockets and cuffs, and the girls were in black T-shirts, fringed to look like they were in tatters, and skirts with red pleather sewn into the pleats. “I want us all to look like we’re clawing our way out of hell,” Emma had instructed. It could not have been more appropriate. She had done our makeup, too, which, for the guys consisted mostly of black lipstick and for the girls involved an elaborate sort of sparkly red eye shadow and false eyelashes. These seemed especially unnecessary and were a tremendous pain to apply, but I resisted only to the point where she had finally snapped, “I may die today, and goddammit, I want to die with long, pretty eyelashes.”

Emma also wanted to die in knee-high stiletto boots, which was where I had to respectfully draw the line. We needed something we could run in, so she had acquiesced and allowed us to wear more utilitarian combat boots. She also dictated that we carry red pitchforks and sequined horns—for both male and female devils—but I planned to ditch these accoutrements as soon as possible. I held, tucked into my chest, the only part of the ensemble not mandated by Emma: a folded-up photo of Lance and one of me. This way, if the two of us got separated, I could still check on the health of his soul, or, if I got taken, I could monitor how quickly I was deteriorating. Small comforts, but comforts nonetheless.

The float rolled on, rattling from side to side, shaking us along the parade route, brass band music filling the air, and I felt the adrenaline trickle through my system, like the slow and steady drip from an IV. Lance grabbed my hand and tugged me behind that mockup he had constructed of the circular tomb I detested.

“Before it gets too wild today, I just wanted to say we got this,” he said, nodding.

I offered a new mantra. “Us against the underworld?”

“Us against the underworld.”

With the music blaring, the rickety float shimmying, crowds roaring all around us, I pulled him into a kiss, as we leaned against that mock crypt. We let the world fall away for a moment, losing ourselves.

“Sorry to interrupt, lovelies,” Dante said. “But the time to glitter-bomb is upon us.”

“Suit up, let’s go,” River, stepping past us with her pitchfork aloft, barked at Tom. Dante, Max, and Lance had rigged up the devilish accessories inside the architecture of a water Uzi. With the press of a button, they would spray the crowd with what looked like confetti but was actually one of Dante’s glitter-camouflaged mixtures for warding off devils. Dante handed out the pitchforks as Max held open a bag full of beads fortified with the same properties. We fanned out across the float and set to work, but I couldn’t help getting caught up in the night’s spirit.

All those people were yelling desperately for beads, shouting at us, cheering for us. We each had already loaded up our own necks with the sparkly plastic necklaces of purple, green, and gold, and now I reached into the sack to pull out snakes of them, tossing them out into the crowds below and up into the balconies of buildings we passed. We faced a sea of hands and arms and various other body parts flashing and shimmying. As we cruised through the Quarter, amid raging music and deafening screams, we had to laugh at all the wild madness, the nudity, the delicious unruliness of it all.

“I’ve seen more naked bodies in the past three blocks than I have in the past, like, ten years at the hospital!” I shouted to my companions, trying to be heard over the collective roar.

“I could get used to this,” Lance called back, his eyes wide under those glasses.

“Me too!” Max agreed as we passed a whole pack of shirtless men, chests painted in Mardi Gras colors.

“Hey, now!” Dante chastised him, jokingly.

I scanned the crowd and was instantly pulled back to harsh reality. Clio, glowing in pristine white, was perched atop the roof of one of the buildings, watching the parade unfold. I broke out into a cold sweat. Lance saw her too. “So Wylie can’t be far away,” I said, studying the scene some more. But we found no trace of him.

“Wait a second,” Lance said. His eyes were glued to something on the opposite side of the street. I followed his gaze up to another rooftop and found . . . Kip.

Yes. Of course. I received the revelation like a lightning bolt, jolting me.

“You think?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said without a doubt. It made so much sense now. A chill overtook me as I thought of that first introduction to Kip. We had never seen Kip and Wylie at the same time and place. That was Wylie’s cover. We were set now. My heart froze, the terror setting in, but I warned myself:
This is what you’ve trained for. You are prepared. You can do this.
I reached past Dante and Max and tugged on Lance’s arm, yanking him to me.

He looked up and nodded. “Okay then, so it’s time,” he said, perfectly calm. I admired his control. Personally, I felt like I was about to jump out of my skin. Dante and Max had stopped throwing beads and were watching us now.

“You’ve got the stuff, right?” Dante asked.

We nodded. A gust of wind blew through, so loud I could barely hear him, swirling all around us, fanning my hair. The sky had taken on an unnatural candy-orange tinge, somehow sinister.

“It should be all you need to hinder their recruitment powers for the day. It should render them powerless to convert or kill nonangels, you know, civilians.” Dante handed me one of the special silver spray-painted pitchforks he had coated in a freshly concocted mixture to temporarily impair their abilities. “Do it,” he said. I wound up and launched the pitchfork through the air, watching it land on Kip’s roof, knocking him down. For a moment his entire being flickered and flashed as he became Wylie, before shifting back to Kip.

“Bingo,” Lance said. That was all it took. Lance could finish the job now and use Wylie to lead him to his real target.