A Chalice of Wind (19 page)

Petra glanced around the room—his words had made people thoughtful, perhaps given new life to dreams that she thought had been left behind long ago.

“ This is all within reach again,” he went on. “Now that we know Cerise’s line has produced twins. They will make twelve and thirteen: a complete Treize. Not that they are the only consideration.” He gestured to Jules and Richard. “Jules and I have been trying to pinpoint the exact location of the source. The land itself has shifted. Richard is working on the rite. Perhaps Sophie or Manon could help him with that. Axelle has the four cups.” Axelle nodded. “Ouida has the vial of water.” Daedalus deliberately met Petra’s eyes. “And you have the twins. It’s all coming together.”

“So I assume the twins are safe, then?” Petra said sternly. “No harm will come to them from any of you?”

“Of course not,” Ouida said, shocked, but Ouida hadn’t been the one Petra was talking to.

“The girls are quite safe,” Daedalus said with a frown. “We do, after all, need them.”

Petra nodded, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Inside her a feeling was rising that she recognized as panic. Ruthlessly she shut it down. Not time yet to panic, she told herself. After all, Claire was so unreliable, and she never could stand Daedalus. And then Marcel—Marcel would be a tough nut to crack. No. There was no reason to panic. Not yet. And before the time to panic came, she would have come up with a plan to save the twins, to keep them from being used in this way, in a rite that would surely kill one of them.

“
I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” Luc said, not looking at me.

We were headed to the levee of the river—broad steps led to a sort of boardwalk. When I’d gone to the garden earlier, he’d been waiting for me, leaning back against the vine-covered wall, his eyes closed. When I’d gotten close to him, his breathing had looked so deep and regular that I’d wondered if he was asleep. But then his eyes had slowly opened, had met mine. He hadn’t smiled, but I’d felt an alertness come over his body as I approached.

I’d sat down next to him, not touching him, not saying anything.

At last he’d stood, held out one hand, and said, “Come.”

I’d had no idea where he was leading me, and I didn’t care. Now we were getting close to the river. I could smell the water and hear the tugboats moving barges downstream.

We walked up the steps and all the way down the boardwalk, avoiding tourists taking pictures of each other in front of the mighty Mississippi. Luc led me to where the levee was just shorn grass and crushed oyster shells. Still we walked on, until we were far away from anyone else. The French Quarter was at our backs, the river spread before us, almost a mile across. We sat cross-legged on the grass, not touching, not talking, and watched the afternoon pass by.

It was dusk before he spoke. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.” He pulled a long piece of grass out of the ground and started stripping it methodically.

“You knew I’d come back.”

He turned to me then, his eyes the exact color of the darkening sky. Reaching out, he took my hand, twining our fingers together. “You’re the most restful person I’ve ever known,” he said quietly. “You have a . . . serenity, an ability to just be, without wanting anything, without needing anything. It’s . . . remarkable. I actually feel almost peaceful when I’m with you.” He gave a short laugh. “If you knew me better, you’d understand how amazing that is.”

I felt the same way about him. “Luc,” I said. A question had been on my mind since the evening he’d kissed me in the garden, stunning me to the bottom of my soul. Nothing that had happened since then detracted from how deeply he’d touched me. “What is it that
you
want from me, and what is it that you’re offering me?”

His eyes seemed to grow darker, or maybe it just looked that way. A thick cloud cover had been moving over us, like God pulling a bedspread into place.

“I’m not mocking you,” I said. “I really want to know.”

“I know.” His fingers stroked my hand while he thought. “If you’d asked me that several days ago, I would have had one answer. Now, I don’t know.”

I smiled, curious. “What would you have answered?”

He gave me a mischievous look that was devastating on his handsome face. “I would have said I wanted to get into your pants, and I was offering you a chance to get into mine.”

I snatched my hand back. “Luc!”

He laughed, and I wanted to kiss him, hard. I blinked with surprise at that thought—not my usual kind of thing. But I felt fierce about him, as if I wanted to mark him as mine. I blushed, and Luc misunderstood.

“Have I shocked you?” he teased. “Surely you’ve lost count of how many guys have said that to you?”

I answered him seriously. “No, not really. I mean, people always knew that I’d say no, so they kind of quit asking.”

He went still, his eyes searching my face. I realized what information I had just given up, and I groaned to myself, mortified.
Oh God, Thais, just tell him every embarrassing thing you can think of.

“ Thais.” He sounded deeply shocked, and there was something else in his voice that I couldn’t identify. I was smothering with embarrassment. I wanted to self-combust right there, just burst into flames and disappear into a puff of smoke.

I covered my face with my hands.

“You can’t be saying—”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Without looking, I kicked him. My flip-flops had fallen off, and now he grabbed my bare foot and held it.

“ Thais,” Luc said, a velvet determination in his voice. He waited: as patient as time, he would sit there until I answered him.

“Thais. You’re saying you’ve never said yes? To anyone?” He leaned closer, his voice as soothing as honey, his breath barely brushing my skin.

I gritted my teeth, pressing my covered face against my drawn-up knees, trying to make myself as small as possible—so small that I might disappear.
Good luck.

Luc put one hand against my shoulder and one against my knee and pushed, as if I were a bear trap he was unspringing. He was much stronger than I was, and, not for the first time, I regretted not having abs of steel.

Then I was on my back on the grass, and an oddly cool, rain-scented breeze blew against my heated skin. Luc pinned my legs down with one of his so I couldn’t curl up again, and I could feel him pressed against my whole length.

“Why do you want to know?” I choked out, pointlessly stalling for time—there was no way to recover from this.

“Oh, I’m very interested, Thais,” he said against my ear. “I’m very, very interested.”

I wanted to die. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted . . .

Again Luc waited—he had all night, wasn’t going anywhere. I had no idea what time it was or when Axelle would be back—she’d left shortly after lunch and hadn’t exactly clued me in to her plans. I felt a raindrop hit my forehead. Time was running out.

“Well, if you must know,” I said in a muffled, ill-tempered voice. “ Then no, I haven’t said yes. There, are you happy?”

I could feel him smile. He pressed his lips against my hands where they covered my face, kissing each finger.

“Not yet,” he said teasingly, and I groaned and took my hands away to glare at him.

But his face, when he looked down at me, turned serious. “Why are you ashamed? It’s a beautiful thing to save yourself. To not squander your beauty, your gifts, on pimple-faced, stupid boys who won’t value you.”

He sounded positively medieval, and I looked at him, puzzled.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said, smoothing my hair away. The one drop I’d felt had presaged a fine, warm rain as gentle as a breeze—hardly more than a mist. It formed tiny, tiny diamonds on Luc’s hair and gave his skin a beautiful sheen in the darkness. “I’m just surprised. It’s hard to believe that someone as beautiful as you has escaped the pressure of giving yourself away.”

“I got pressured,” I said wryly, remembering a night when Chad’s predecessor, Travis Gammel, had actually kicked me out of his car and made me walk home at
night
because I wouldn’t have sex with him. Bastard. I was still mad about it.

“What stopped you?” Luc asked softly. “And don’t tell me you never wanted to. I can feel passion flowing under your skin. You’re made of desire.”

Luc had a way of saying flowery things that sounded completely natural and sincere, even though out of anyone else’s mouth they would have sounded stupid or artificial. And he was right. I had wanted to. Sometimes so much that I had felt almost crazy. But never enough to actually go ahead and do it. Now I shrugged. “Never met the right guy,” I said.

One dark eyebrow rose, giving me a perfect opportunity to say, “Until you.” But I didn’t—couldn’t. After a moment, Luc leaned over and brushed light kisses along my jawbone, making my eyes drift shut and my bones go limp.

“I guess you’ve said yes to millions of girls,” I said, and then swallowed as an unexpected shaft of poisonous jealousy pierced me so sharply I almost gasped. The thought of him with anyone else made me feel like crying. For a long moment he looked into my eyes, and then he sat up, leaving me cold.

I realized our clothes were soaking wet from the light rain and felt many tiny drops come together to roll as one down my neck. Luc’s shirt was translucent, sticking to his skin. I felt humiliated, gauche, like some stupid high-school girl. Which I was, of course.

He turned back to me, a look of gentle regret on his face.

“Not millions,” he said, sounding almost sad. “But— a lot. And until now, I never wished it were different. But you, Thais—” He leaned back down on one elbow next to me. “For the first time, I wish that I could have no memory of anyone but you.”

I burst into tears, in that suave, woman-of-the-world way I have. In that moment I knew I loved him, and even more frightening, I felt he loved me. Then he was kissing me, kissing the tears in my eyes, my rain-washed face, my mouth. I smoothed my hands over his wet shirt, feeling the heat of his skin through the cloth. Our legs were tangled together, and for the first time in my life, no alarms went off in my head, no warnings told me to get myself out of there. In my mind, there was a peaceful silence, an acceptance. The warm, gentle rain drifted down on us, making me feel invisible, private, elemental.

A line from an old song floated into my consciousness, and if I had been a real witch, I would have let it float over to Luc, all raw emotion and timeless melody. It went:
I’m all for you, body and soul.

I
yawned and stretched, smiling as I relived some of last night’s dreams. I had dreamed about Andre, how he looked as he came down to kiss me. I could practically feel him in my arms, feel his weight and his strength. He was perfection. It had killed me to have to leave him Friday night. Maybe today I could get away, and we could take up where we’d left off.

But first, breakfast. I could smell coffee—excellent. I rolled out of bed and headed out onto the landing. Nan’s bedroom was separated from mine by a short hall that led to the one upstairs bathroom. Our house is called a camelback shotgun: you could stand in the front door and shoot a gun, and the bullet could go out the back door without hitting anything in the four rooms in between. And it was a camelback because we had only two rooms upstairs to the four rooms below. The only-two-bedrooms factor was one of the main reasons I hated the idea of Thais coming to live here.

I had others.

Glancing into Nan’s bedroom, I saw her standing at the foot of her bed. She was completely dressed, which was unusual: Sunday was our traditional laze-around, get-a-slow-start day. I wandered in, then stopped in surprise.

Nan was packing a suitcase that lay open on her bed. Q-Tip was trying to climb into it—prime napping territory—and Nan lifted him out.

“Good morning, dear,” she said briskly, barely glancing at me.