A Circle of Ashes (17 page)

“Because you look like a Girl Scout selling cookies.” I shook my head in disgust. Identical, schmidentical. Clearly
I
had inherited every bit of fashion sense between us.

“What should I wear, then?” Thais sounded irritated, but I was already heading for my closet. Tonight she was going out on a real date with Kevin LaTour, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to do everything in my power to make sure those two lovebirds hit it off. Given how much we looked alike, it was a nightmare for me to see myself dressed in a plain white T-shirt and a knee-length denim skirt. For a
date
.

Fortunately, my closet was chock-full of clothes that would make Thais look like the hottie I am. Thais followed me into my room and sat on the bed. I glanced at her as I considered various options. We’d been doing laundry all week, sometimes washing things two and three times to get out the smell of smoke. “We’re going for hot and available, but not slutty,” I said, holding up a peasant blouse made of thin, crinkled cotton. I held it to my face and breathed in. Only the scent of detergent.

“Oh, good,” Thais said dryly.

I looked at her. “Are you nervous?”

“I don’t know. Not really, I guess. Kevin’s really nice.

She didn’t sound hyper with enthusiasm, and my chest tightened. The more she liked Kevin, the less Luc would mean to her. It wasn’t that I wanted him for myself, that bastard, but something mean inside me just wanted Thais not to care about him anymore, as if that would somehow make him more mine. It was ugly, but it was there.

I tossed the peasant blouse over to the bed. “Put that on.”

“How is this better than what I’m wearing?” Thais asked, pulling off her shirt.

“For one thing, it’s just prettier, with all the embroidery. It looks girly, unlike your dockworker T-shirt. For another thing, all that elastic around the top makes guys feel like they can just tug it down.”

Thais froze. “Ew!”

I shrugged. “You don’t have to let ’em. But it puts the idea in their mind.”

“And I would want that
why
?

I sighed and shook my head, then found a black miniskirt that looked great with that top. “Just put this on and listen to the master.”

Thais held it up. It came to mid-thigh. “And how do I sit down in this?”

“Let it ride up.” Honestly, the girl was hopeless.

“How do I pick up something I drop?”

“Like this.” I bent my knees, dropped into a crouch, then stood up. “Or let him get it.”

She gave me a dirty look but put on the miniskirt. I switched out her plain silver hoops for some dangly earrings that almost brushed her shoulders.

“Your hair is fine, but we have fabulous eyes,” I said, examining her face. “You should do more with them. And your skin is still a little pink, so we need to tone it down.”

Ten minutes later, when Kevin rang the bell, Thais was ready. She looked fabulous, much more like me.

Nan and I hovered in the background as Thais opened the front door. I saw Kevin standing there, and Thais was right—he really was good-looking.

“Whoa
,” I heard Kevin say, and then, “Uh, I mean, you look … really great.”

Thais laughed, then waved goodbye to us and shut the door behind her.

“Did you want to meet him?” I asked Nan.

“I can meet him later,” Nan said, heading into the workroom. “He seemed like a nice guy.?

“And he’s not a witch,” I said, following her. “After Luc, anyone else is simple.” As soon as I said it, I winced and thought,
Crap
. I’d worked hard to not mention Luc’s name—not to Racey, Nan, or Thais. I’d downplayed how I’d felt about Luc, how heartbroken and sick I was about it. I didn’t want anyone to know. It was bad enough that
I
knew.

But of course Nan, as sharp as a shard of glass, caught it and turned to me.

“What do you need to tell me about Luc?” she asked gently.

“Nothing.” Nor did I need to tell her that Richard had kissed me the other night. A fact I was still trying to suppress in my own memory. And I got to see
both
of them tomorrow night at the Récolte celebration. Goody.

I went to the cupboard and got out our four cups. We’d planned to work on scrying magick tonight since Thais would be out of the house and pathetic Clio didn’t have a date with a normal, appropriate person who wasn’t 250 years old.

Nan started to draw a circle on the floor with a thin line of sand flowing through her fingers. Chalk circles are good, all-purpose circles; circles drawn with salt have protective, purifying powers. Circles can be made out of almost anything—shells, rocks, gems, leaves, silk fibers—you name it. Todays circle of sand had powerful protective qualities because of what sand is made of: quartz, lime (in the form of ground-up, calcified shells), feldspar, mica, magnetite. They all had protective powers.

I set up the four cups and lit the incense and the candle and then another pillar candle, a blue one, in the middle of the circle. Nan and I sat down, facing each other. It wasn’t like it was before, before I knew she’d lied to me, kept my father from me. Just two months ago I had trusted her completely, put myself in her hands without question. Now I knew that I couldn’t. I wondered if it would interfere with our magick, our connection.

I looked up to see her watching me, as if she knew what I was thinking. With a small, sad smile, she took my hands, then closed her eyes.

Eventually Nan started singing, and I joined in with my own song when I felt ready. We each watched the candle flame between us, and soon I had become part of it. I saw the almost-clear base of fire, faintly tinged with blue, that seemed to hover at the bottom of the wick. Then the orange parabola that rose above it, burning steadily. Above that, the peak of white and yellow, swaying, undulating, burning like life itself. The essence of fire became bigger than the candle flame, as though this small mote had broken off a raging inferno and somehow landed here. I could feel its appetite, its eagerness to consume. It seemed so pure, so above considerations of good or bad. It just
was
itself, with neither pride nor remorse.

I wanted to be fire.

Then, as I gazed dreamily at it, my vision opened up to see a campfire on the ground. An iron pot was boiling above it, supported on a trestle. I looked around and saw a village. A narrow road, covered with
crushed oyster shells, wound through an uneven line of wooden houses. It looked like a movie set, and I walked down the road, curious. A pig ran past, squealing, followed by two small boys with sticks. Loose chickens pecked in the dirt by the side of the road. I smelled wood smoke.

One smaller house stood a little ways off the road. It was painted yellow and had flowers and herbs growing in the yard. It felt like a place I knew, and I walked toward it. The front door was open, and a cat ran out of it, followed by a woman with light brown hair, almost blond. It was Nan, a much younger Nan, holding a toddler on her hip. Her lips were pressed tightly together and she seemed distracted.

Then a man came out of the house, holding a valise made of carpet. It was the same man we’d seen arguing with Nan in our vision. He was tall and handsome, with black hair. He had my birthmark on one cheek, but his skin was tanned so darkly you could hardly see it. He said something to Nan, and she shook her head angrily, not looking at him. He let out a breath, threw up his hands, and walked away from them. A horse was tethered nearby and he got on it, then rode off into the distance out of sight.

The scene changed abruptly, and Nan was much older, as old as she looked now. She was in a small room, standing by a narrow bed. Her forehead was damp with sweat and she looked tired. A girl I recognized as Sophie stepped forward and handed her a basin of steaming water and a towel. A young woman was on the bed, not the girl from the rainy night who died, but someone different. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and our birthmark but still somehow looked like a young Nan.

She was in labor, and Nan was helping. The baby was born, and Nan lifted it and tied the cord with string. Sophie smiled happily and took the baby in a white cloth. Then Nan looked alarmed and leaned over the girl in the bed, grabbing her hand. The girl’s face was pleased and relaxed, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. She was dead. I felt Nan’s grief, her anger, a huge sense of despair. In another scene I saw Nan fill out the death certificate. The girl’s name had been Béatriz Rousseau. The year was 1818.

The baby had had a birthmark too. That birthmark had been handed down in our family for generations, as though we were marked for death even before we had lived.

I didn’t want to see anymore and felt myself closing off. I was half aware of sitting on the workroom floor, and then I felt Nan’s warm hands slowly pulling themselves out of mine. She drew away and left me, clearly meaning for me to continue practicing my skills.

I didn’t know what to scry for. I didn’t want to see any more of the past, see how generations before me had died, one after another, like dominos, in childbirth. Like my mother. I had the sudden realization that I myself would die like that if I had a child. I would die. I’d never thought about children, didn’t even know if I wanted any. If Luc and I had stayed together somehow, would I have wanted to have his child? A gulf of longing and emptiness rose inside me, thinking of it.

I shook my head. This wasn’t scrying. I wasn’t concentrating. I could think about all this later.

Luc. God, Luc. Would I ever not miss him? Not want him?

Then he was right in front of me; I was scrying him in the flame. I hadn’t meant to—my longing had opened this door. But now that I was here, I didn’t close it. I hadn’t seen him in days and my eyes feasted on him, as if I could consume him just by looking.

Luc was in a dark, swampy, woodsy place. He was kneeling on the ground, surrounded by crystals and hunks of salt rock. Before him was a broad, shallow bowl of water. He was working magick.

He blinked and looked up, right into my eyes.

I drew in a startled breath and winked out my vision, dousing the candle. I swallowed and opened my circle quickly, my heart pounding. I was ashamed of spying on him, yet everything in me was singing with joy at seeing him again, just for a moment.

I put away our tools and swept up the circle. I heard Nan in the kitchen and hoped she wasn’t doing any of the cleanup, which would only make me feel worse. Though of course I would be happy to do less.

I had seen Luc, and he’d been working magick. For what? I would have given anything to know what he’d been doing. What if the two of us made magick together, joining our hearts and minds, losing ourselves in a magickal place where power and life were all around us? It would be heaven, as close as I would ever get to heaven, since our religion didn’t have a heaven or a hell.

Luc loved Thais. He’d used me and lied to me and made me love him. I hated him for it—yet pathetically, I admitted only to myself that I still loved him despite everything. And I would be seeing him tomorrow night.

“S
o
Ponchartrain
is a Native American word, right?” I asked Kevin. We were walking along the levee at the lakefront, hoping to catch any kind of breeze. We’d gone to a movie, which I could already hardly remember, but it had been mildly funny and not too bad.

“Yeah,” Kevin said, taking my hand. “Look up ahead. There’s a neat fountain I want to show you.”

As we headed down the sidewalk, I began to catch on to the fact that the lakefront was a major parking and make-out spot. There were also tons of people just standing around their cars, talking, drinking beer. Other cars drove past and called to them or razzed them. It was a whole scene, and we hadn’t had anything like it in Welsford.

I was liking Kevin more the better I knew him. It wasn’t an overwhelming, joyous, desperate thing, like it had been with Luc, but it was pleasant and nice. Which was a welcome change.

“Oh my gosh,” I said as we came closer to the fountain.

“It’s called the Mardi Gras fountain,” Kevin said. “It was made back in 1962, and just last year it didn’t work and was all broken. But they’ve restored it. It’s cool.”

It was an enormous fountain surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. Around the concrete base was a ring of tiled plaques, and we walked closer to see them.

“Each one is for a different Mardi Gras krewe,” Kevin explained. “Some of them don’t exist anymore, and the new ones aren’t shown. But a lot of them are still around.”

We walked slowly around the fountain, reading the plaques. The names of the krewes were weird and funny: Momus, Comus, Zulu, Osiris, Rex. The fountain itself shot maybe twenty feet into the air, with rings of jets that played at different times and heights to make it seem patternless. Plus lights set into the bottom changed the color of the water itself from purple and green and gold, to just one shade, to red and blue and all sorts of combinations.

It was bizarre, overdone, and gaudy yet beautiful and strong. Very New Orleans.

“This is awesome,” I said sincerely. “I love this. Thanks for showing it to me.”

Kevin smiled down at me. “It’s cool, isn’t it? My folks used to take me here when I was little.”