Seduction (25 page)

Henry saw his reaction. “Not really,” the young man answered.

But Loup clapped him on the back. “Close enough,” he said. His voice was hoarse with emotion, and his deep affection was not lost on Henry.

The abbess held on to Henry’s hand a little longer than was necessary. She was young, he noticed, and there was a sauciness in her eyes that was at odds with her nun’s habit. Henry blushed under her direct gaze. “Ah . . . what is your gift, Lady Abbess?” he asked, trying to make conversation.

She pulled down the hood of her habit, revealing a cascade of blond hair. “My beauty,” she said without any embarrassment at all.

“She is a siren,” Loup explained on the long ride home. “She can bend men to her will. A useful gift during these dangerous times. I understand the archbishop is particularly fond of her,” he added, laughing.

Henry blushed furiously, although night had fallen and his discomfort could not be seen.

“Hurry, Henry!” Loup called. “I need to get to bed.”

But Henry did not keep up. He rode slowly, drinking in the light of the full moon and remembering the touch of the young abbess’s hand in his own.

• • •

At the next full moon, to Henry’s disappointment, he and Loup were met by a different abbess.

“My predecessor has gone out into the world,” the woman explained. “Hers is not a gift that is easily discernible as witchcraft, so she will be safe until she returns.”

“What’s she doing?” Henry asked blatantly.

The abbess’s response was just as blunt. “Finding a husband,” she said. “She’s looking for a title.”

Loup shook his head. “Poor sod. Won’t know what hit him.”

Henry pretended to share the joke, but the waves of misery emanating from him were almost palpable.

He had never even learned her name.

• • •

From that day forward, Henry threw himself wholeheartedly into his work, which he decided was not farming, but commerce.

He invested in a number of enterprises, both in Paris and London, and in merchant ships that traveled to the ends of the earth. Within ten years of his first foray into business, he had become one of the most successful traders in France. By 1658, more than 200 years after meeting Captain Loup, Henry had increased his master’s wealth many times over, and had no plans to stop expanding his mercantile empire.

“I’d like to travel to the New World,” he announced at dinner.

Loup raised his head from his soup. “Why?” he asked. “You don’t need money, do you?”

“Of course not,” Henry said.

“Then why bury yourself in business?”

“Because I need to work.” Henry put down his spoon. “I’m actually rather good at what I do.”

“Indeed,” Loup said. “And so you’d like to test your skill in the English colonies across the sea?”

“Yes.” Henry was nearly quivering with excitement now. “There’s a ship filled with witches that’s leaving from the English coast in a month’s time.”

“Filled with witches,” Loup mused over a heel of bread. He was thinking of the rash of public burnings of which the Church had tacitly approved. “Will that be safe?”

Henry blinked. “Can you think of any safer vessel than one filled to capacity with beings possessing supernatural power?”

They both laughed. “That’s fine, then,” Loup said. “But keep your talent to yourself. Even witches can go mad at the smell of gold.”

CHAPTER

•

TWENTY-NINE

I awoke in a welter of paper, with creases across my face and a pool of drool on my sleeve. Blinking against the sunlight, I gathered the loose pages of the book together. That is, I stretched out my fingers and the pages flew into them.

So maybe I haven’t lost my magic after all,
I thought, feeling a little more hopeful since my failure to read Belmondo. My joy was short-lived, though. As I came fully awake, I remembered the faces that had looked into the kitchen last night: Jeremiah’s, so angry he looked practically radioactive; Peter’s, blank and purposefully indifferent, as if he could no longer countenance anyone as sinful as I was; and Marie-Therèse’s. Hers was the face that stood out most in my memory: Bloodless and preoccupied, it was the face of a woman who had more trouble in her life than she could handle.

I put Azrael’s book away in my backpack and made my bed. There was nothing I could do about Jeremiah. Or Peter, either, unless I was willing to fall abjectly at his feet and beg
him to forgive me for looking at another guy, which I wasn’t. No matter how foolish I’d been behaving with Belmondo, I didn’t need Peter to absolve me of my sins. But I could do something about Marie-Therèse, even if it was nothing more than listening. I knew what it was like to feel alone and unwanted. Sometimes just having someone around helped.

“Wait a second,” I said out loud. I rummaged through the papers on my dresser for my meat-market calendar. It was Saturday! I’d promised Marie-Therèse that I’d go with her to look at the retirement home where she was being sent. That might perk up her spirits a little.

I got dressed and knocked on her door. She answered looking as put-together as ever in a pair of dark trousers and a silk blouse, with a string of pearls around her neck.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think I feel up to traveling,” she said with a vague wave of her hand.

“Hey, moving out of here isn’t going to be the end of you,” I said softly.

She sighed as she led me to a pair of exquisite gilt-edged chairs and gestured for me to sit down. “But it is. I wish I could explain it to you.”

“So why can’t you?” I asked, exasperated. “Do you think I’m cowen?” In the corner of the room, on a dainty vanity, was a small vase of flowers. Holding out my hand, I concentrated on the flowers until the vase flew across the room into my fingers.

Marie-Therèse looked surprised. “Goodness, what power you have!”

“Not really,” I said. “Where I come from, I’m just sort of run of the mill.”

“Ah,” she said wistfully. “To have magic like yours . . . I think it must be very nice to use the gifts you are born with. Perhaps at one time I myself . . .”

She’d lapsed into silence. “Go on,” I prompted.

“It’s really nothing,” she said, blushing, “but at one time I fancied I could talk with the dead.”

“Oh?” I didn’t want to be rude, but talking with the dead—in Whitfield, anyway—was pretty elementary. In fact, the Meadow, which was a kind of park in the middle of town, was filled with the spirits of witches who’d passed into what we call the Summer Country. To talk with them, all you had to do, basically, was go there.

“Of course, I can’t do that any longer.” She laughed. “None of us hold on to our magic very long. Perhaps when I am on the other side, the ability will come back to me.” She looked puzzled. “At your home, do witches become stronger with age?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t want to seem arrogant, but magic was like a muscle. The more you used it, the stronger it became. They wouldn’t know that here, of course, since witches weren’t allowed to use their magic for anything except looking good.

She examined her hands. “Here, our magic is a sacrifice. We give away a little of it at every . . .” She caught herself, looking guilty.

“It’s all right,” I assured her. “I saw the ritual. And I know about the Enclave, and the initiation that’s going to take place in August, at Lammas.”

“Ah. Well, then,” she said sadly. “That is when it begins. At Initiation.”

“When what begins?”

Her eyes scanned the corners of the ceiling. “Oh, it’s nothing, nothing . . .” At this point I was really getting annoyed at her dithering, but then she looked at me with such longing, such suffering, that it was almost painful for me to see her. “That is when we commit ourselves.”

“To what?”

She bit her lip, as if she were deliberating whether to tell me or not. Finally she swallowed and then said thickly, “To being . . . youthful.”

“Er, right,” I said. Even though I knew that information already, the words sounded ridiculous. My great-grandmother would cluck like a hen at the thought of witches trading in their talents for something so idiotic.

“Our youth is a measure of our magic. We lose it with time, so it is understood that after a certain number of years, the magic will have waned to the extent that our participation in the Enclave will no longer be of benefit.” She spoke with a quiet dignity that I knew hid an ocean of pain. “I’m afraid I have reached that age. If you attended the ritual last night, then you’ll have heard Sophie’s farewell speech to me,” she said bitterly. “The coven has voted. On my birthday I must leave. That is the agreement I made when I came here, and that is what I am bound to honor.”

“But what kind of crazy agreement is that?” I shrieked. “And who says you’re ‘no longer of benefit’? There are still a million things you can do!” I was really mad now, pacing around the room and shouting. “You can write your memoirs! You can take up quilting. Or photography. Or you could get a job. Shoot, you could learn to skydive if you wanted to! And you can certainly develop your magic again.”

She laughed weakly.

“Maybe you don’t believe me, but you should. These people have got you brainwashed.” I pulled her to her feet. “Come on, Marie-Therèse. We’re going to the Poplars.”

“Now?”

“Right now.” I went to her closet and pulled out a jacket for her to wear over her clothes. “Look, you don’t need these creeps. All they’re good for is posing.” I looked at her levelly. “And scaring you. It’s time you had a real life.”

She looked down, her eyelashes fluttering with excitement. “Do you think so?” she asked. “Really?”

“You bet,” I said.

• • •

It took two Metro transfers, three buses, and a taxi, but we finally got to the Poplars.

Marie-Therèse was right: The house was every bit as fabulous as the Abbaye des Âmes Perdues, with at least forty rooms on three floors, a palatial building right out of
The Three Musketeers
. It was starting to get dark outside, and as the taxi pulled up the curved driveway, we watched the lights inside the house go on, one room at a time, the chandeliers gleaming through the silk draperies.

“Looks pretty good to me,” I said as I rang the doorbell. Marie-Therèse smiled, seeming to agree with me.

A butler in livery answered. “Good evening, Comtesse LePetit,” he said with a slight bow, and opened the door for us.

Marie-Therèse was like a young girl, blushing and giggling. “He knew my name,” she whispered as the butler led us into an immense sitting room filled with sixteenth-century antiques.

“You’re a countess?” I asked, inadvertently whispering, afraid to disturb the studied elegance of the place.

She brushed the question away.

“The chateau has been recently refurbished, madame,” the butler said. “We hope you are satisfied. Please let us know if you would like to have anything replaced or removed.”

“No, it’s . . . it’s quite lovely,” Marie-Therèse said.

“Perhaps Madame la Comtesse would enjoy a tour of the house?”

“Oh, yes,” we both said, following him up the great curving stairway. At the top of the stairs, we passed a maid dressed in black and white, with a lace cap on her head. For some reason I couldn’t understand, the young woman nearly gasped when she saw us.

“See that a tea tray is brought for the ladies in the sitting room,” the butler snapped at her. The maid curtsied and averted her eyes.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

The butler shook his head, a movement so slight it was almost invisible. “Rose is a new addition to our staff,” he explained stiffly. “Please forgive her awkwardness.” He shot her an evil glance. I supposed it was something personal between them, so I tried to forget about their brusque exchange and concentrated instead on the rooms.

They were beautiful and, like the sitting room, filled with perfectly preserved antiques. But something bothered me about them, something I couldn’t easily explain. Marie-Therèse might have been a witch, but since the members of the Enclave didn’t diversify their gifts, she would have almost no idea of what witches, and particularly object-empaths
like me, could do. The vibrations in wood and metal lasted a long time, and furniture absorbed its owners’ history well. If I paid attention, even the most ordinary end table or kitchen chair could tell me volumes about the people who had used them.

But what was weird about the pieces in the house Marie-Therèse and I were touring was that none of the pieces could tell me anything about who had lived there recently. There were traces of long-ago aristocrats worrying about the Revolution (including one old geezer who secretly dressed in his wife’s clothes), and the indifferent touches of servants assigned to clean them, but I could find
nothing
—not one human marker—after, say, 1800. It was as if all the history of these things had been wiped away along with the dust.